(Yes, this is kind of a goofy, semi-corporate example — but that’s exactly the type of example we need because that’s our starting point in so many places and realms. And the way to start getting where we need to go is to take one step at a time toward deeper cultivation.)
This is how you deepen a culture! You invite people to engage with more of it — rather than be a smooth black box of efficient consumer delivery, you slow down, open the world up, and begin to build relationships with the material and human reality of it. Reforestation in action!
The intro everyone's talking about (rightfully, so)!
Hear from Brandon, a projectionist at Cinemark Dallas XD and IMAX, as he gives his IMAX 70mm pre-film intro before The Odyssey 👏
When you do this, culture is cultivated: the type of culture that has a certain social and spiritual force to it — a force that can produce and sustain the stuff needed for life!
Fascism will win if the only fight is creative destruction vs rusted bureaucracy.
The third way is participatory democracy — similar grasping toward the Good, the Beautiful, and the True, but not vicariously through a select few "geniuses"...rather through the the lively mess of our shared co-creation!
The FDR memorial captures it well — not one large thing to marvel at, but a range of many things, all with a shared vitality flowing forth.
@ear2thepavement That’s why I think probably the best primary order for citizen agency is just randomization. The above is the best for the party’s chances of winning the general. Both are better than the status quo for both purposes, I think.
One idea that I don’t hear mentioned enough is to have the primary calendar be based on the previous election’s results — the first 10 states should be the 10 swingiest states, so whoever wins the primary is well acquainted with the states they are going to be campaigning in.
DNC Ken Martin reiterates at the party's meeting today that he thinks a fifth state should be added to the 2028 presidential primary calendar — and he says it "needs to be from the South."
"We need to have an eye to the future of the electoral map and skate to where the puck is going. In 2030, the Census is going to take the puck to the South and to the Southwest."
This above system, true randomness, or some order based on whether the state’s demographics resemble the electorate as a whole all seem better than this inherited system, which seems to serve no higher interest than the political class of the four initial states.
Local Halls of Fame, Local Newspapers, Local Archives, Local Historic Markers... they all send a message: What you are doing—right here—matters. It's a countercultural message, because the message the main mediums are sending is: All that matters is what's happening over there.
In many ways, we are still reckoning with the frame of the 2000s—a way of approaching American life and politics that most of us see as a total failure and calamity. Yet we still haven’t been able to fully shake off the baggage of that era—a key challenge for 2028 hopefuls!
“Terrorism” is the most significant word of the century—deployed for 25 years now in multiple contexts as a pure propaganda tool aimed at turning off citizens’ critical thinking upon hearing it. So much talk of Orwell, yet not enough about how it is today’s most Orwellian word!
Today, I convened leaders from around the world for a ministerial meeting on the resurgence of political terrorism—driven by a rising tide of violent left-wing extremism. Together, we must rebuild our counterterrorism architecture to defeat the new wave of this old evil.
Jung on America, in 1912 to the New York Times:
“America does not see that it is in any danger. It does not understand that it is facing its most tragic moment; a moment in which it must make a choice to master its machines or to be devoured by them.”
Just published our seventh JOIN 101 episode of What Are You Doing Alone That You Could Be Doing Together? — this week's is on grieving together, with the Sad Dads Club's Rob Reider: https://t.co/CtL1gygkZw
To learn more about Ella Baker, listen to our LOST PROPHETS episode on her: https://t.co/2ekcny1L5K
And check out Barbara Ransby's great biography: https://t.co/zY9FhSu2VD
My favorite Ella Baker quote: “I must leave now for one of those small church night meetings which are usually more exhausting than the immediate returns seem to warrant, but it’s a part of the spade work, so let it be.” Spade work — preparing the soil for action — is the long-haul heroism we need to advance any of the causes we care about.
Latest LOST PROPHETS episode is up! A Fourth of July week reflection on America and its Founding[s], with help from James Baldwin, Hannah Arendt, Dorothy Day, Christopher Lasch, Garry Wills, Kermit Roosevelt III, and the late great Fred Dewey. Check it out at: https://t.co/Nqg29wkbYv