“A winter of peril and significant possibilities.”
“In each of these moments, enough of us have come together to carry all of us forward”
This. So much this. This is the story of America.
“Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire, destroying everything in its path. Every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for total war. And we must reject a culture in which facts themselves are manipulated and even manufactured.”
😭😭
Biden runs through the history that the Capitol, the Mall, the city have witnessed. The change. The inexorable pull toward the future.
“Hear me out... take the measure of me and my heart.”
Still here, this fairytale
“They did their best. They did their duty. They healed a broken land.” 🇺🇸
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@anneapplebaum@RadioFreeTom I think maybe you can both be right — a bit. Perhaps you will both forgive a semi-long explanation.
Anne — very grateful for this contribution, precisely bc it removes the problem from the “nothing can be done” category & points out that plenty of places have done this before /1
@anneapplebaum@RadioFreeTom Also *we* have done this before. Throughout the civil war, Lincoln was obsessed with things infrastructure and national symbols (Thanksgiving Day, etc), knowing that eventually it would all have to be physically and mentally knit back together.
/2
@anneapplebaum@RadioFreeTom I also worked in Liberia just after the end of the long civil war, & saw how effectively some of the tools you describe in your thoughtful piece worked. Especially the overall “change the subject” idea. For the first time for a whole generation, they could be something else /3
We all know amplification of conspiracy theories — usually in the form of a question — by right wing media has become standard fare to harden views.
“Can we be SURE Clinton didn’t kill Seth Rich?” Etc. (Note: she didn’t) /1
“How do we KNOW Chavez didn’t use Dominion to steal the election from beyond the grave?” (Note: because he’s dead FFS)
Posing it as “questions that need to be answered maybe” allows them to evade responsibility for what they are doing. It’s standard fare. /2
Why do I raise this?
So you may remember when Notre Dame burned in April 2019 — a tragic accident. Online conspiracy theories immediately flourished. One claimed the fire was an act of Islamic terror. Many right wing personalities amplified this lie. /3
How do we change our mindset to better deter grey zone threats at home and abroad?
1) The Kremlin relies on below-threshold conflict to achieve strategic objectives. We must enhance our capabilities in these domains, and also how we monitor and assess threats in grey spaces. /1
2) The way we engage the Kremlin allows Russia to evade consequences, which encourages them to take greater risks and accelerate disruptive activities in their near abroad and further afield. We must own our role in contributing to this state of affairs, and up-end this cycle. /2
3) Ignoring Russian behavior creates a system that also requires us to ignore things about ourselves. We must evaluate the weaknesses that we have failed to confront, renew our strength at the seams, reconceptualize what resilience & defense are in an era of grey threats. /3
Catch up today on the first sections of our serial on @RenewGreatPower evaluating our weakness at the seams and vulnerability to below-threshold and grey zone threats — and how they provide a template to renew American resilience
I am 100% here for the rawness and quiet fury of @RepRaskin
“I am not going to lose my son at the end of 2020 and lose my country and my republic in 2021 — it’s not going to happen. The vast majority of the American people — republicans, Democrats, and independents — /2
— reject armed insurrection and violence as a new way of doing business in America... This was the most terrible crime EVER by a president of the United States against our country, and I want everybody to feel the gravity and solemnity of those events... /2
...At the same time, of course, all of us are deeply invested in President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris moving the country forward to repair all of the wreckage and damage of last year — on everything from COVID-19 to the economy... /3