I've just been flooded with emails of people just giving testimonies of their lives, saying exactly this. I got an email from a guy who works for some sort of defense contractor, some lower-level job, served in the military. And he said, look, I served in the military with black and Latino soldiers. My supervisor is a young black woman who's smart as a whip, and I admire her, and we get along great.

Is that really the issue [of bathrooms and gender] we want to be pushing leading up to a momentous election like this one? It's that shortsightedness that comes from identity politics.

We need to be stronger. We need to deter the Russians. We need to show resolve, which is why cooperating with them on the other hand can be more difficult.

To take one example, I mean, the whole issue of bathrooms and gender - in this particular election, when the stakes were so high, the fact that Democrats and liberals, more generally, lost a lot of political capital on this issue that frightened people. People were misinformed about certain things, but it was really a question of where young people would be going to the bathroom and where they would be in lockers.

Tradition has to be retaken by the liberal forces, so that they can show their values of tolerance and democracy not as novel western ideas but as ones indigenous to Pakistan, as a part of its very creation.

Researchers have been asking a basic question of young people. Should men be allowed to beat their wives? How you answer that question may depend on where you live. U.N. researchers put that question to adolescent girls in India and Pakistan and 53 percent - a majority of girls - said yes, wife beating is justifiable even if it's for refusing sex.

India may be overtaking China as the world's most polluted country. Even now, which country is worse depends on the day.