Reading Time: 6 minutes Above and beyond intentional voter suppression, American politics is designed to make some votes count more than others. What reforms could make this country a genuine democracy?
democracy
Posted inEducation
Want to protect secular democracy? Speak up at school board meetings
Reading Time: 3 minutes You don’t have to run for Congress to help protect our secular democracy. It’s at the level of your local school board that the Christian nationalist agenda is making its most influential stand. So it’s at public meetings of those school boards that our voices are most desperately needed.
Posted inEducation
‘Anti-woke’ education wars and democratic schools
Reading Time: 4 minutes The anti-woke education wars are a symptom of a broken community. We don’t agree about schools because we don’t agree about the value of education or about what it means to be American. This is a fraught time to be a teacher, as polarization and distrust reach into school board meetings, libraries, and classrooms. It’s […]
Posted inSatire
Your $5 donation is the only thing that can save democracy
Reading Time: 2 minutes Dear Casey, Our situation is even more dire than when I sent a similar email yesterday. The Republicans have taken back the House and now have the opportunity to pass restrictive laws that will strip away your freedoms. Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Will $5 really do anything?” Yes! Casey, our coffers are empty. […]
Posted inFree Expression
‘Free speech’ must be reformed before it destroys US democracy
Reading Time: 7 minutes The midterm elections are over. But, in a sense, it doesn’t matter—because the virulent, now-years-long epidemic afflicting American politics remains: cynical Republican mendacity, which is to say, purposeful lying and duplicity—spearheaded by former president Donald Trump. And zero accountability so far for the merchants of this corrosive assault on the nation. Make no mistake, this […]
Posted inCritical thinking
The work goes on: 7 post-midterm podcasts for a better democracy
Reading Time: 12 minutes Are you doomscrolling around the ongoing US midterm count? The closeness of many races, the losses on some key issues, and the spectacle-driven politics that a tightly split House of Representatives foretells certainly weigh on the US today. Will results be contested on the grounds that they didn’t yield a massive sweep for one side? […]
Posted inPolitics
The crisis of democracy: on remaining vigilant without freaking out
Reading Time: 4 minutes The fiery rhetoric of the campaign trail might make you might think American democracy has failed or is failing. There is declining trust in government, elections, and in democracy itself. And some people are freaking out. This is a crisis of democracy. But there is no such thing as a stable, happily-ever-after version of democracy. […]
Posted inSocial Media
Kanye’s Parler, Musk’s Twitter, WeChat’s fake news: Our digital crisis deepens
Reading Time: 4 minutes It’s been a “pick your poison” week for problems with our information networks: from the world’s richest person using Twitter for complex foreign policy, to a prominent US musician laying claim to a far-right social media platform, to the alarm continuing to sound on US midterm misinformation circulating on poorly regulated China-based chat apps. While […]
Posted inSocial Media
Twitter’s Elon Musk debacle raises serious questions about digital citizenship
Reading Time: 9 minutes On October 3, Elon Musk tweeted a proposal for “Ukraine-Russia Peace”, with a Yes/No poll that yielded 2.7 million responses (59 percent “No”). Because Musk is the richest person in the world, with a current net worth of around $230 billion USD from Tesla, SpaceX, and recent AI ventures, his views on Russia’s invasion of […]
Posted inNews
‘The completely legal GOP plot to destroy American democracy’
Reading Time: 2 minutes The New York Times wants you to know that, even while you’re sleeping, MAGA Republicans are hard at work subverting the country’s 2022 and 2024 elections infrastructure so that the GOP will win even if it loses. A chilling new Times-produced video released Sept. 21—“Inside the Completely Legal Plot to Destroy American Democracy”—lays out the […]