Quite the block party going on today.
I'm not going to apologize for having been an author for 20 years. I'm not going to apologize for having written a well-researched/sourced book on Iran. I'm not going to apologize for telling folks this book is informative reading right now.
I'm not going to apologize for having been an author for 20 years. I'm not going to apologize for having written a well-researched/sourced book on Iran. I'm not going to apologize for telling folks this book is informative reading right now.
Second point: I don't know why many—but not all—Iran policy experts spent the last few years telling us Trump was a dove on Iran. That's not what my research uncovered. So I'm not going to say experts who were wrong were right just because they have full-time jobs in think tanks.
Third point: I welcome disagreement—from people who've read PROOF OF CONSPIRACY—with the 4,000+ sources therein. Good luck contradicting 4,000+ sources constituting the world's top investigative journalism. But those who say folks shouldn't read up on Iran now—no respect for you.
Fourth point: There's a whole class of folks on Twitter who've done nothing during this crisis—the crisis of an out-of-control, unstable, corrupt POTUS—but be trolls. These are unhappy people who'll always be unhappy. I disregard them. What I worry is that they'll infect others.
Fifth point: Everyone is implicitly called upon, in these times, to use their skills as best they can—even imperfectly. I'm a trained lawyer, investigator, scholar, researcher, journalist, author, and teacher. I've tried to use my skills in *exactly* the combination you'd expect.
Sixth point: People who spend all day trolling/hating on others should obviously be ashamed of themselves. Equally obviously, they won't be—it's not in their nature. So the question for those of us not broken in this way will always be, "How are *we* using the skills *we* have?"
Seventh point: This is unchartered territory for all of us. None of us know precisely what to do or how to act, me included. None of us expected to live in this moment in history. That's why I say that it's the *question* that matters—*earnestly* wondering what we can do to help.
Eighth point: My full—even obnoxiously long and comprehensive—bio has always been in my Twitter bio for one reason: so you all can understand (if you decide you care, which you certainly don't have to) where I come from, what my perspective is, what my experience and training is.
Ninth point: Those of you who know I'm an American metamodernist have also looked up "metamodernism"—so you know that one of its *key principles* is the belief that true innovation, daring, and rebellion requires, *in this era*, being willing to be laughed at. So that's baked in.
Tenth point: The people who troll this feed are postmodernists—another way of saying that what animates me and this feed is *wholly foreign* to them. They think laughing at me will enervate me because that's what a postmodernist would say and/or feel. But I'm not a postmodernist.
Eleventh point: Metamodernism isn't about trolling or trying to trigger depressed postmodernists. Which is why I always say people triggered by the feed just shouldn't follow it. This feed is *not* intended to trigger your hopelessness or innate sadness if you're a postmodernist.
Twelfth point: I *hate* promoting my book. I *hate* it. But the book wasn't written as a postmodernist work—to reflect my ego. It was written as an emergency document, a metamodern work inasmuch as it's a paradox: a history book *written in real time*. So I *must* write about it.
Thirteenth point: PROOF OF CONSPIRACY isn't worth promoting because of what just happened. It was *written* under the theory that there's *so much quality news out there* the near-future is predictable if you curate all we know about the present. That theory has been proven true.
Fourteenth point: I wrote PROOF OF CONSPIRACY knowing that at the time of its publication X number of folks would understand its value, and that near-future events—what's happening now—would increase the volume of folks seeing its emergency value to 2X or 3X. That's where we are.
Final point: I don't care about follower counts or money. My bio shows you why. I appreciate followers and understand the value of money but it's never motivated me. If you hate this feed, unfollow; if you hate reading books on ongoing emergencies, don't read PROOF OF CONSPIRACY.
