For all their benefits, computers, even un-hacked computers, provide the unscrupulous with powerful tools for spreading deceitful and malignant messages — messages intended to disorient rather than inform the electorate. Controlling that contagion is a matter of both individual and societal responsibility.
The vision of defunding the police tells us that public safety and racial justice go hand in hand, and both are impossible under the status quo. I find power in that vision because it attests that a better future is necessary. And possible.
“How do we affirm and extend the ethic that welcoming religiously diverse people, nurturing positive relations among them, and facilitating their contributions to the nation is part of the definition of America?” When it comes to the religious practices of our fellow citizens, the answer to that question begins with a commitment to empathy and charity rather than bigotry or ignorance.
To say that Bill Danforth was a great man nearly goes without saying and seems a platitude without much meaning. What does it mean to be great, after all? In taking Bill’s measure, I think about Freedom and Fate, the poles around which all human lives orbit. Most of us keep them in a poor balance, misusing, abusing and wasting our freedom, cursing and railing against our fate. Bill kept such an equipoise of these Lords of our Life, an easy meshing of the exuberance of freedom and the acceptance of Fate.
I suspect that some people decided to delay watching Michaela Coel’s HBO/BBC One series I May Destroy You for fear that it would, well, destroy them. I did. Many of us choose to forego media that represents sexual violence.
