Good morning, Quartz readers!
It’s turning into quite a month for global strongmen.
Last weekend, Chinese president Xi Jinping upended his country’s two-term limit on power, meaning there’s now little to stop him from ruling for life. Two days later, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan pushed through sweeping changes to the electoral system that give him a strong chance of extending his 15-year reign in the 2019 elections.
And there’s zero doubt that Russia’s Vladimir Putin will be re-elected with a massive majority on Sunday, taking him to a total of 24 years in power by the end of his next six-year term.
Donald Trump responded last week by joking that America should itself give the president-for-life thing “a shot someday.” But the idea could have some actual backing among Trump voters: A 2017 Pew poll showed that 33% of Republicans (paywall) would like a “strong leader” whose power is unchecked by courts or Congress.
All this fits nicely into the narrative of the world turning authoritarian at an unsettling speed.
At times, that strongman model can look tempting. Putin’s centralized rule and disregard for international law allows him to take quick, daring actions that can leave liberal democracies looking impotent and flat-footed. The West’s riposte to Russia’s alleged murder of a British agent on UK soil, for example, has so far been limited to the expulsion of a few diplomats and a grumpy letter from Britain’s friends.
But take a step back, and you start to see all kinds of flaws in the strongman method.
Putin may be able to flex his muscles on some international issues, but the length and autocratic nature of his reign has left Russia far weaker than it should be. The Russian president has shored up power with patronage. To stay popular with the masses, he has had to take massive risks—among them the seizure of Crimea—which have alienated Moscow from all the main global powers. On the world stage, Putin is more of a reactionary counter-puncher than an agenda-setter.
Xi risks following Putin’s lead and sapping the dynamism out of his country’s economy—which became the world’s second-largest under a political system where the leading actors rotate and institutions more or less function. Strongman rule, by its very nature, undermines those institutions. Russia’s constant plunging in and out of recession should serve as a cautionary tale.
For all its frustrations and seeming impotency, the “Western liberal order” bears that name because it is the order.—Max de Haldevang
Five things on Quartz we especially liked
Should we even write this? Perusing Trump’s recent remarks on trade with Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, Gwynn Guilford ended up questioning everything. Here, she shows how the president’s speaking style gives journalism an existential crisis, and even undermines the concept of a shared reality.
Everything you ever wanted to know about seltzer. Why are Americans so obsessed with seltzer? Is seltzer not the same as sparkling water? Is it bad for you? Adam Freelander answers these questions and more in our inaugural Obsession video, a thoughtful, hilarious, and refreshing look at the history (and recent popularity) of seltzer water.
The next war between tech giants is in health. According to Helen and Dave Edwards, Apple could win it via the trojan horse that is the Apple Watch. They examine two patents to argue that while Alphabet and Amazon slowly make their way into American healthcare, only Apple can make medical surveillance bearable, let alone cool.
“The blackness has really made me drowsy.” Despite a strong box-office debut in China, some moviegoers there are less than impressed with Marvel’s Black Panther, which has become a racial and cultural milestone. Echo Huang used online reviews to delicately highlight the limited exposure many Chinese people have to other races.
You do have it harder than everyone else. Lila MacLellan delves deep into why people often feel their parents were tougher on them than on a sibling—and why both political parties believe the electoral map puts them at a disadvantage. It’s a psychological trap called “headwinds-tailwinds asymmetry.”
Five things elsewhere that made us smarter
More human than human. How do you encapsulate all of humanity in a single photograph? For most of us, that question is an amusing mental exercise. For the editors of Wikipedia’s “human” entry, it’s a real and complicated challenge. In Wired, Ellen Airhart explores the debate behind the chosen photo and what it means to be—and look—human.
Your next potato chip could affect the evolution of the species. Diet has shaped human genetics over centuries. But the rapid pace of dietary change in modern times, Brian Handwerk writes at Smithsonian.com, complicates a delicate process that has life-and-death consequences for our descendants.
We need to talk about talking. Reddit is the most conversational social network of them all—but what if that conversation is hateful? In the New Yorker (paywall), Andrew Marantz looked into Reddit’s attempts to monitor communities without becoming a censor. Choice quote: “My internal check, when I’m arguing for a restrictive policy on the site, is Do I sound like an Arab government?”
Meet the best pool sharks in America. In the macho world of professional billiards, the women’s game was once on ESPN and growing. No longer. Megan Greenwell, for Topic, meets some of the women who still compete in a sport where the best players win barely $5,000 a year in prize money.
Is there a right to have sex? In the London Review of Books, Amia Srinivasan looks at the disturbing case of Elliot Rodger (paywall), an “incel” (involuntary celibate) who killed six people in 2014. It’s a rampage with some important and uncomfortable lessons for modern feminism, which has long struggled with questions about how desires are formed and politicized.
Our best wishes for a relaxing but thought-filled weekend. Please send any news, comments, Apple Watches, and sparkling water to hi@qz.com. You can follow us on Twitter here for updates throughout the day, or download our apps for iPhone and Android. Today’s Weekend Brief was edited by Kabir Chibber.