Thread by @JYSexton

As a professor, I think it's important to offer information during complicated/dangerous times.

I'm going to offer some lessons from the research I've been doing for my new book that isn't out until Sept that helps understand this moment.

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tinyurl.com/sgjd936

Apologies in advance for threads, but we need to take this time to wrap our heads around just what's happening and how we ended up in this position.

Larger political posts will come through my blog themuckrake.com and on here I'll offer bonus connotation.

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Topics will include the cycle of misinformation, from national myth and popular culture, to propaganda that has made our moment completely confusing and dangerous. I'll be using current popular culture and movements throughout our history to show how we got to this place.

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The truth is that our history, the myths we've been fed and told throughout our lives and educations have been incredibly misleading and all go through the prism of American exceptionalism and white supremacy. We need to sift through these stories in order to understand.

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We didn't get to Trump by accident. It was a fulfillment of American culture and history. It wasn't an aberration, it was a systematic failure and the result of a culture that has become so intertwined with its own lies that it can't tell the difference anymore.

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Topics for these threads and articles will be in part from the book but all tertiary things I found along the way. To whet the appetite, we'll be talking about things like action movies, The Avengers/comic book megaculture, the spread of Tetris from Russia to the US.

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I'm not going to do a Patreon. There are people who need help more than me. But I do ask, if you enjoy my work, if you gain from this feed, please consider preordering AMERICAN RULE: HOW A NATION CONQUERED THE WORLD BUT FAILED ITS PEOPLE.

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tinyurl.com/sgjd936

I'd also urge other educators and experts to use this time to disseminate specialized knowledge that usually only circulates through academic circles or areas of expertise. We need to take advantage of this moment and help people understand how we got here.

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This crisis will end. It's going to be tragic and heartbreaking. But we need to be prepared to make a better, more human, truthful world when it does end. And the only way to start is to undo the damage of misinformation.

Thanks everyone. I'm looking forward to this.

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