Can Multiracial Democracy Survive?
The Future of Multiracial Democracy
| Immigration to the West has long been soaring, as growing numbers of people flee hunger, poverty, and war. This surge of migrants has taken a toll on the democracies they wish to call home, many of which are struggling to serve even their own citizens. The complex questions that arise in response have become flashpoints for conflict, sometimes escalating into violence. The following Journal of Democracy essays explore these tensions, with an eye on making democracy work in societies that are becoming more diverse than ever before. Read free for a limited time. |
| Why National Identity Matters From enhancing physical security to encouraging mutual trust, an inclusive sense of national identity continues to be crucial to the flourishing of modern states. By Francis Fukuyama |
| Majoritarianism Without Majorities Majoritarian nationalism is a defining feature of our time. If we are to resist ethnonationalist leaders trying to recast our societies into imagined majorities, we must revise our conception of democracy and the exclusion inherent in majority rule. By Kanchan Chandra |
| Liberal Democracy in an Age of Immigration Immigration threatens to erode liberalism, as far-right parties and migrant communities with illiberal views gain power. Mass publics have shouldered the blame. But should political elites be held responsible? By Rafaela Dancygier |
| Democracy and Diversity in Western Europe Immigration has changed the face of Western Europe. Yet mainstream political parties have largely ignored citizens’ concerns about what immigration means for their societies, leaving them ripe for far-right populists to exploit. By Sheri Berman |
| The Rise of Multicultural Nationalism Some liberals attribute the origins of our polarized political era to “identity politics.” But multiculturalism need not provoke majoritarian anxieties — not if national identities can open ways for all citizens to be recognized and heard. By Tariq Modood |
| The Journal of Democracy is published quarterly in January, April, July, and October. Subscribe now for full access to the Journal of Democracy archives. |
The White House UFC Fight By The Numbers
Published: June 11, 2026 (TheOnion.com)
On Sunday, the same day as President Trump’s 80th birthday, the White House will host UFC Freedom 250 on the South Lawn. The Onion takes a look at the key facts and figures behind the unprecedented mixed martial arts event.
$1.2 million
Cost of restoring Thomas Jefferson’s original Octagon
5
Drinks before shirtless Pete Hegseth tries to join fight
7
Times mixed martial arts mentioned in Bill of Rights
2
Future Supreme Court justices on fight card
.001%
Likelihood fighter walks out to the theme from Will And Grace
13
Average ring girl age
8
Times Pope Leo has declined to attend
20
Starved lions on hand if things get slow
3
Women
9
Scattered teeth that will be found during next year’s White House Easter Egg Hunt
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres: “The Apotheosis of Homer” (1827)
Translation Class July 18-19
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| invites you to join us for Translation®– — One of The Prosperos Foundation Classes —– Saturday & Sunday, July 18-19 Class will run two full days (10:00 am – 5:00 pm Pacific Time)  Presented by Pam Rodolph, H.W., M. Live on Zoom — attend from anywhere! Translation® class provides the instruction required for shedding limitation, disorder, and confusion from your world by using this fundamental resource: Straight Thinking in the Abstract. When we judge by appearances, we judge amiss. “That which is essential is invisible to the eye,” as Antoine de Saint Exupéry wrote. Learn to see through what seems to be — limitation, anxiety, oppression — to Truth, which lies waiting for your discovery. Further Information and Registration |
| Copyright © 2026 The Prosperos, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: The Prosperos P.O. Box 4969 Culver City, CA 90231 |
Translation Saturday Meeting June 13
June 13: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM PST
Mike Zonta, H.W., M.
In a crisis — any crisis — The Prosperos offers Translation. Translation Saturday Meetings is a weekly series of Translation presentations by veteran Translators, live and up to date on the issues of the day.
It is not a Translation workshop, It is not a Translation class. It is not a group Translation in the usual sense, though group participation is encouraged.
It is, however, restricted to those who have taken Translation class. So if you have never taken Translation class, check the calendar tab on The Prosperos website (TheProsperos.org) or get in touch with us and we will schedule a class.
Last week our sense testimony was: Not enough love in the world. And our conclusion was: Love is consciousness in infinite supply OR Consciousness is love in infinite supply.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – See you there!!! – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Here’s the link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81749347119
For more info and link to join please email Mike Zonta at:
Peter Gabel on the loving world we aspire
(Image from Medium.com)
“We together are realizing each other’s liberation once we find the social and political path to spread this collective awareness sufficiently across social space, then the loving world to which we aspire will begin to be born.” [1]
–Peter Gabel
Peter Gabel was an American law academic and associate editor of Tikkun, a bi-monthly Jewish critique of politics, culture, and society. He wrote a number of articles for the magazine on subjects ranging from the original intent of the framers of the Constitution to the creationism/evolution controversy. Wikipedia
Born January 28, 1947, United States
Died October 25, 2022 (age 75 years)
Latest news about water on Mars
Artist’s impression of a primitive ocean on Mars, which some researchers suggested harbored more water than the Arctic Ocean on Earth. (Most of that water was later lost to space.) (Image credit: NASA/GSFC)
- Google AI Overview
Recent Mars missions have revealed that the Red Planet contains far more water than previously thought, preserved primarily as underground ice, ancient buried river deltas, and deep subterranean water reservoirs. [1, 2, 3]
Latest Discoveries & News
- Underground Oceans: Using seismic data from the NASA InSight lander, scientists identified a massive reservoir of liquid water deep within the fractured rock of the Martian crust. The volume is immense; if released, it would cover the entire planet in an ocean 1 to 2 kilometers deep. However, it resides at depths of 11.5 to 20 kilometers, making it inaccessible with current technology. [1]
- Ancient Rivers & Lakes: The NASA Perseverance rover discovered buried remains of an ancient river delta up to 35 meters below the surface of Jezero Crater. This provides some of the deepest and oldest evidence of flowing water on the Martian surface. [1]
- Subsurface Groundwater Habitats: Research on ancient sand dunes in Gale Crater indicates that underground water continued to flow long after surface lakes dried up. This suggests that subterranean, sheltered environments may have sustained microbial life for far longer than initially believed. [1]
- Current Salty Flows: Scientists continue to monitor locations where super-salty water (brines) may currently flow on the Martian surface. The high salt content lowers the freezing point, allowing the water to exist as a liquid for short periods. [1]
- Water & Space Exploration: NASA is actively testing mobile wastewater treatment systems (capable of processing human waste into drinkable water and plant nutrients) in preparation for future crewed missions to Mars. [1]
For a look at the data being gathered by NASA’s rovers investigating these ancient, water-carved landscapes:
New Evidence of Water on Mars Thanks to NASA Curiosity … Museum of Science YouTube · Feb 23, 2023
Beyond Either/Or: Kierkegaard on the Passion for Possibility and the Key to Resetting Relationships
By Maria Popova (themarginalian.org)
Some of the most difficult moments in life are moments of having to choose between two paths leading in opposite directions — to tell or not to tell, to leap or not to leap, to leave or not to leave — each rife with losses (even if they are necessary losses) the pain of which you will feel acutely and with gains which you are constitutionally unable to imagine.
You could do it rationally, applying Benjamin Franklin’s framework of weighing the pros and cons. You could do it emotionally, turning to people you trust to decide for you, abdicating responsibility for doing the right thing. You could concede the futility of free will and flip a coin. Still, that bifurcation of the soul remains because life, in all its irreducible complexity, is not something you can optimize the way you optimize a route for minimal traffic or maximal scenery. What makes those moments so difficult is the knowledge that there will never be a way of testing where the other path would have led — you only have the one life, lived.
But perhaps there is a third way — one based not on renunciation, which is at the heart of all binary choices, but on integration, which is the pulse-beat of possibility. A way to stop trudging the ground of forking paths and lift off into the sky of the possible.
Art by Marc Martin from We Are Starlings
That is what the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (May 5, 1813–November 11, 1855) explores in his 1843 masterwork Either/Or (public library). Long before Alan Watts admonished against the trap of thinking in terms of gain and loss, before George Saunders offered his lovely lens for living an unregretting life, Kierkegaard writes:
If you marry, you will regret it; if you do not marry, you will also regret it; if you marry or if you do not marry, you will regret both; whether you marry or you do not marry, you will regret both. Laugh at the world’s follies, you will regret it; weep over them, you will also regret it; if you laugh at the world’s follies or if you weep over them, you will regret both; whether you laugh at the world’s follies or you weep over them, you will regret both. Believe a girl, you will regret it; if you do not believe her, you will also regret it; if you believe a girl or you do not believe her, you will regret both; whether you believe a girl or you do not believe her, you will regret both. If you hang yourself, you will regret it; if you do not hang yourself, you will regret it; if you hang yourself or you do not hang yourself, you will regret both; whether you hang yourself or you do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This… is the sum of all practical wisdom.
[…]
Many people think [they are in the mode of eternity] when, having done the one or the other, they combine or mediate these opposites. But this is a misunderstanding, for the true eternity lies not behind either/or but ahead of it.
Kierkegaard considers the frame of mind necessary for living beyond either/or:
In no region of life is the tyranny of binaries more punitive and the passion for possibility more vital than in our closest relationships, which at their strongest and most nourishing must transcend the confines of binary categories, for any relationship on the level of the soul has elements of lover, parent, child, and friend, and suffers when subjected to either/or. And yet there are times in life when such relationships collide with the confines of practical reality, the reality in which binary choices must be made, and must shape-shift in order to survive.
Illustration by Maurice Sendak from a vintage ode to friendship by Janice May Udry
A century before Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote so beautifully about embracing the mutability of intimate relationships, Kierkegaard considers what it takes to let a relationship change organically in order to feed the soul in a new way:
What a way to remember that mediating holding on and letting go is the art of trusting time, that everything is eventually recompensed, every effort of the heart eventually requited, though not always in the form you imagined or hoped for.
Chiron Enters Taurus – Healing Worth, Money and What Matters
(Astrobutterfly.com)
The body knows long before the mind understands.
We were born with an inner barometer that tells us, through the body, what is good for us and what isn’t. Most of us have simply forgotten how to read it.
That inner barometer – call it sensing, instinct, deeper knowing, – is the ‘front line’ of truth, and everything builds on it.
Ignore it, and our whole life becomes a lie.
Chiron’s ingress into Taurus on June 19th, 2026, opens the door to restoring it.
With Chiron in Taurus, there’s no more hiding, distracting ourselves, or keeping busy. The time has come to finally come to terms with that part of us that is Taurus.
In a way, we HAVE to do it. We have no choice. In the past 7 years, Uranus has been savaging the Taurus area of our chart, sending electric shocks through it, burning it down, pulling the ground beneath our feet.
Whether our mind agrees with this or not (yet), we needed this shakeup. Like everything that is alive, Taurus cannot survive on stagnation.
Uranus left us with the ashes – and this is from where Chiron is taking over.
Chiron orbits closer to the Sun than Uranus – which makes its energy more accessible to us. Not easy, but workable.
Where Uranus overwhelms, Chiron can actually be met and worked with.
Chiron’s orbit takes around 50 years, which means its return arrives just after the midlife transits – at the point in life when we’re finally ready to face what it asks of us. Something fundamental becomes available to shift.
It makes sense if we look at Chiron’s symbolism: half-horse and half-man, half-animal and half-god, Chiron represents the ongoing process of making nature and consciousness work together.
Without Chiron, we can only live half lives and half truths. Chiron pushes our buttons – he’s called the Wounded Healer, after all – so that we finally address what we’ve been avoiding. The result is not ‘healing’ in a therapeutic sense, but alignment. Restoration. Evolutionary relief.
So how will Chiron express itself during its upcoming 7-year stay in Taurus?
First, this is a rare transit – not the kind we get every other year, where we have the luxury to try and learn.
The last time Chiron was in Taurus was around 50 years ago, from 1976 to 1983. Some of us might remember it, but most of us were either too young or not yet born.
And what is rare is significant. Unless we live for another 50 years, we won’t get another opportunity to heal that part of us that is Taurus.
If there is one thing that the world – and every one of us – desperately needs right now, it’s healing the animal within us.
The Taurus wound is the exile from the body, from the knowing, from the primal trust that it’s safe to be here.
When that primal trust is broken – through early experiences of scarcity, conditional love, having to earn our place, being too much or not enough – the body stops feeling safe – and the knowing goes offline.
When the knowing goes offline, we end up not fully living – running on autopilot, going through the motions.
When Taurus knowing is restored, we just KNOW what is good for us, what makes sense, and what helps us grow. We make good choices. And then all the things we normally associate Taurus with – self-worth, pleasure, money, productivity – follow downstream from there.
Restoring Taurus can be an almost impossible task – that is, if we approach it with psychologizing, affirmations, emotional processing, or in any other non-Taurean way.
OR it can be the most natural thing in the world – if we approach it the way Taurus itself works.
“Chiron in Taurus – Healing Worth, Money, and What Matters” is the framework for restoring our Taurus function.
Here are the details: