2021 Archives

Just like a tiny trim tab alters the direction of an airplane or ship, it’s small groups and even single individuals who are always at the core of societal change. You can help save democracy in America. Seriously. You. You may think that being part of a small group of activists can’t possibly really produce large social changes, but in reality the opposite is true. Throughout history, it’s almost always been small groups who trigger larger social and political changes.

Republicans are pushing a full-blown authoritarian agenda & they know it’s so unpopular that the only way they can get it through is to rig the system -- so they have... You’d think we have a right to vote, rather than just a privilege that Republican-controlled states could take away in dozens of different ways. After all, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution references “the right to vote at any election” and even says that any state that violates that right shall lose members of its congressional delegation as punishment.

American conservatism has been a scam since the 1920s, and continues to exclusively benefit the very white and the very wealthy. Ron DeSantis’ executive order making it illegal for teachers to require kids in their classrooms to wear masks to protect the teacher and other kids in the class (and their families) isn’t about masks. If it was about masks and their health potential, pro or con, he’d be discussing how to reduce the transmission of this deadly virus in Florida, which now accounts for more than 20% of all new Covid cases in America.

There is nothing more powerful than a warrior who doesn’t fear dying, but instead lives in breathless anticipation of a “good death” on the battlefield. With armed militia groups trying to take down our democracy, from January 6th to invading state capitols, things seem bad, maybe even Civil War bad. But if they hook up with the Christian right — with one small change to their ideology — we could be plunged into a hellscape right out of the tenth century. There’s a thin line between what we call “civilization” and the kind of grim barbarism created by ISIS, Boko Haram and Al Qaeda. That line is defined by a single and simple tweak of a culture and its main religion’s primary story-line with a variation that, from time to time, infects human cultures.