DIGITAL AUTHORITARIANISM: FINDING OUR WAY OUT OF THE DARKNESS–While democrats once believed that innovations in information and communications technology and data analysis would promote more open societies, the actual effects of these tools have been mixed. Authoritarians are using technology to deepen their grip internally, spread propaganda, undermine basic human rights, promote illiberal practices beyond their borders, and erode public trust in open societies. Today, Russia continues its campaign of cyber and information attacks against democratic institutions and social cohesion in the United States and Europe. Iran and North Korea are following suit. The Chinese Communist Party is forging a future of mass surveillance and “social credit” scores, and rapidly exporting those tools to other parts of the world. Autocratic governments seem to be outpacing free societies in harnessing new technologies to advance their political goals. warontherocks.com
The Shameful Final Grievance of the Declaration of Independence–A second hard truth exposed by the 27th grievance—and its racist depiction of Native Americans as “merciless Indian savages”—has generated much less public discussion. In indicting the king for unleashing Indians on the “inhabitants of our frontiers,” the Declaration was not referring to a specific event but rather to the recent escalation of violence, which was caused by colonists invading Native lands west of the Appalachian Mountains. In response, a confederation of Senecas, Shawnees, Delawares, Ottawas, Cherokees, and other Native nations exercised a right of self-defense and attacked new colonial settlements. Although the Native nations had British support, they were acting on their own and not at the instigation of the Crown. Nonetheless, Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration’s primary drafter, hoped that by fanning the flames of settlers’ anti-Indian racism and implicating George III, he could ignite a general conflagration against the British in the West. In this way, the 27th grievance helped lay the foundation for an American nationalism that would demonize the continent’s indigenous people, especially when they resisted American aggressions. www.theatlantic.com
The Age of Decadence–But what if the feeling of acceleration is an illusion, conjured by our expectations of perpetual progress and exaggerated by the distorting filter of the internet? What if we — or at least we in the developed world, in America and Europe and the Pacific Rim — really inhabit an era in which repetition is more the norm than invention; in which stalemate rather than revolution stamps our politics; in which sclerosis afflicts public institutions and private life alike; in which new developments in science, new exploratory projects, consistently underdeliver? What if the meltdown at the Iowa caucuses, an antique system undone by pseudo-innovation and incompetence, was much more emblematic of our age than any great catastrophe or breakthrough? www.nytimes.com
Taylor Swift And The Gray Area Of Disordered Eating–In college, I’d spend 45 minutes on the elliptical machine, then spend an hour at an exercise class. I’d eat Raisin Bran for lunch, then rice with peas, maybe with a little cheese on top, for dinner. If I only ate a bag of microwave popcorn for lunch — a “meal,” I’d later learn, that was a universal signifier of disordered eating — my friends would give me the side-eye, until one day, they sat me down and told me, “You’re not getting enough calories.” www.buzzfeednews.com
Rules of Engagement–Traditional museums shape the histories of power through the display of rare objects that can’t be accessed elsewhere and help us assemble the texture of cultural memory. But the singular works or artifacts that can expose unchecked histories of violence and subjugation might not be sufficient to address the gaps in any collection. www.laphamsquarterly.org
The Digital Dictators–But this wishful vision of a more democratic future proved naive. Instead, new technologies now afford rulers fresh methods for preserving power that in many ways rival, if not improve on, the Stasi’s tactics. Surveillance powered by artificial intelligence (AI), for example, allows despots to automate the monitoring and tracking of their opposition in ways that are far less intrusive than traditional surveillance. Not only do these digital tools enable authoritarian regimes to cast a wider net than with human-dependent methods; they can do so using far fewer resources: no one has to pay a software program to monitor people’s text messages, read their social media posts, or track their movements. And once citizens learn to assume that all those things are happening, they alter their behavior without the regime having to resort to physical repression. www.foreignaffairs.com
Karen: The anti-vaxxer soccer mom with speak-to-the-manager hair, explained–If your name is Karen, Becky, or Chad, you may have noticed a growing trend of people using your name as an insult. Increasingly, “Karen” in particular has emerged as the frontrunner for the average “basic white person name” — a pejorative catchall label for a wide range of behaviors thought to have connections to white privilege. And the recently trending Twitter hashtag #AndThenKarenSnapped has further shifted the “Karen” meme from its nebulous origins toward becoming a mainstream trope. www.vox.com
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