Because they’re things I might want to revisit or am mulling over:
History is important to read about and reflect on, and distortions of history can cause distortions of vision now. This article is an interesting read, especially the discussion of Reconstruction at the end. It’s not what I learned about Reconstruction…. I’m apparently not the only person thinking about history. Bannon thinks about history a lot. Here’s an article about war and crisis as leverage for change, a point of view apparently very interesting to Bannon. Here’s a more recent article about Bannon’s reading these days, about “the best and the brightest.”
Lessons from our global neighbors are also important. Marches are important for building community and visibility, but we’ve seen the Arab Spring and marches in Russia and now marches in Romania — marches that fizzle and marches that lead to larger movements. Likewise, we can listen to what activists in places like Venezuela have to say about populist governments; they have some experience.
Last, data. Data’s been a big and perhaps under-rated part of these changes in our government. Here’s an unauthorized translation of an early article about how the Trump campaign used data, perhaps inspired by Brexit’s use of data. I think vice.com finally picked up the story and published an “authorized translation” a week later.
Data Selfie is a way of tracking your own Facebook data — haven’t used it yet — but it might be worth checking out as you ponder your own susceptibility to having personalized advertising whisper possibly false sweet nothings into your ear, influencing what you see as Truth….