Quote of the Day

I like to have (Nikki Giovanni's Love Poems) around in the kitchen so I can read a poem while the water boils and another while the butter melts, and so on.  It's a reminder to read slow and savor (Love Poems), and the smells of the cooking make me more aware of my senses.

-- Annie Spence, Dear Fahrenheit 451, p. 78

Quote of the Day

Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

-- Mark Twain

Quote of the Day

Reading has shaped me, guided me, reflected me, and helped me understand and connect with, and this is not hyperbole, HUMANITY.

-- Annie Spence, Dear Fahrenheit 451, p. 3

Quote of the Day

I absolutely demand of you and everyone I know that they be widely read in every damn field there is; in every religion and every art form and don't tell me you haven't got time!  There's plenty of time.  You need all of these cross-references.  You never know when your head is going to use this fuel, this food for its purposes.

-- Ray Bradbury

Quote of the Day

I know books on a deep level.  So deep that, over the years, I've found myself talking to the books.  Only in my head, because I'm not crazy; but, inside my head, I talk to them in letter form, because books are fancy and need to be formally addressed.

-- Annie Spence, Dear Fahrenheit 451, p. 2

Quote of the Day

After so many years of following Scientology's rules with the goal of reaching enlightenment, I experienced a realization so difficult to swallow that it was staggering.  I was nothing but a shell -- a brittle, hard shell -- of a person.  Appearances can be so deceiving.  From the outside, I looked pretty good.  I worked hard.  I was financially successful.  I devoted myself to the church.  I sold my religion to anyone who was willing to bite.  It will fulfill you like nothing else you have ever known!  I would say.  Yet there was nothing inside of me.  Nothing.  I was taught to feel nothing.  By conforming, by doing what others did merely because they did it, I had paved the way, in the words of Virginia Woolf, for a lethargy that "steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul."  I had become "all outer show and inward emptiness; dull, callous, and indifferent."

-- Michelle LeClair, Perfectly Clear, p. 278

Quote of the Day

By walking away from the church, I turned my back on an entire life -- friendships and associations that were decades old.  In doing so, I also rejected the ethical foundation that had guided my life.  I was a ship unmoored.  My entire adult existence was founded on the guidelines of Scientology.  I thought I was progressing toward a higher state of being.  I believed that the church was a righteous force in society.  We were going to save the world!  Then it was gone.  All of it.  My beliefs.  My values.  My purpose.  I had to figure out which parts of me were my brainwashed self and what was authentic.  Who was I?  And who did I want to be?  The questions both excited and angered me.  Excited because I could finally explore thoughts and feelings that had been asleep for more than twenty years.  Angry because I had allowed myself to be conned by a so-called religion based on science fiction, absurdities and deception.

-- Michelle LeClair, Perfectly Clear, p. 277

Quote of the Day

Silence requires the maintenance of an inner life.

-- Michelle LeClair, Perfectly Clear, p. 275

Quote of the Day

We cannot see our reflection in running water.  It is only in still water that we can see.

-- Chinese proverb

Quote of the Day

An ethics officer brought (my mom) a copy of the church's "Disconnection Policy" (which it claims doesn't exist).  She already knew what it said: Members who associate with "enemies" of the church risk being declared enemies themselves unless they "disconnected."  The ethics officer told my mother that if she stayed connected to me, she would be banished from the church and lose her chance for immortality.

-- Michelle LeClair, Perfectly Clear, p. 256-257

Quote of the Day

That day, I'd given my mother a smartphone.  At first she said no -- as a [Scientology] Sea Org member, she was forbidden to have her own phone -- but she finally accepted it.  She kept the phone hidden, but every chance she got she used it to search the Internet for information about the things I'd been telling her.  Reading the claims of ex-communicants about vendettas by the church, she recognized a pattern.  Their stories were chillingly similar to what was happening to me.

-- Michelle LeClair, Perfectly Clear, p. 256

Quote of the Day

Mom had doubted me for the longest time, but then she began asking herself: Might she be blind to what was happening?  She had been with the church for twenty-six years.  Was everything she thought colored by her bubblelike existence?  Perhaps she didn't even know how to think for herself anymore.  But the idea that she could be so wrong frightened her, so she wavered for a while.

-- Michelle LeClair, Perfectly Clear, p. 255-256

Quote of the Day

I repeatedly begged my mother to leave the church, to see that all my misfortune began when I came out as gay, that the church was persecuting me for it.  For more than two years, she had repeatedly appealed to the church for ways to help me, but all she'd received were more probing questions about me and my life.  What was I doing?  Who was I with?  How was my business?  What kind of income was I bringing in?  Could she get me to make another donation?  Tell us more about this woman she's with.  She had always answered their questions, trusting the church's word that they were only asking so they could help me.  Whenever my mother tried convincing me that they were asking out of concern, I pleaded with her to open her eyes.  The church had no intention of helping me.  My fellow Scientologists -- the people I had been taught to trust blindly -- were trolling for information to hurt me.

-- Michelle LeClair, Perfectly Clear, p. 255

Quote of the Day

I would reteach myself how to be the person I was before the church infiltrated the mind of a vulnerable young girl and then systematically and subliminally indoctrinated her into the warped imaginings of L. Ron Hubbard.  They can take away all of my belongings, I told myself.  They can ruin my business.  But they cannot destroy who I am.  Or whom I love.

-- Michelle LeClair, Perfectly Clear, p. 252

Quote of the Day

The fog in my brain had finally completely lifted.  I finally understood, completely and without a doubt, that my so-called religion was a cult.  For the first time in years, emotions I had been taught to ignore spilled over.  Sometimes I felt like a fool for having been so blind, and for so long.  I was furious over the church's betrayal -- of me and so many other believers -- and fearful of what lay ahead.  I was overwhelmed by remorse about people I had hurt along the way because of my twisted religious beliefs.  Sometimes my regrets hung over me like a storm cloud and I couldn't see the light that another day could bring, but then I would remind myself that I was a victim, like so many others, of a calculated scam called Scientology.

-- Michelle LeClair, Perfectly Clear, p. 252

Quote of the Day

Scientology had unwritten directives that were passed down through the ranks by word of mouth -- usually by auditors and ethics officers.  One was that we were "strongly advised" to avoid the news because the church was never given a fair shake.  Translation: Don't do it.  We were taught to believe that everything written by journalists was fraught with misrepresentations and lies.  News sites were blocked on all church computers.  We were told that whatever "news" we wanted could be provided by the church; all we needed to do was ask.  Everyone I knew abided by the rule -- or at least said they did.

-- Michelle LeClair, Perfectly Clear, p. 46

Quote of the Day

... dispensing praise was a key component of Scientology's methodology for luring new members.  They build you up to hook you, then tear you down in order to take control of your life and convince you that you need the church in order to excel and achieve what the church calls "true spiritual enlightenment and freedom."

-- Michelle LeClair, Perfectly Clear, p. 22

Quote of the Day

Y'know, your children deserve your attention and that's the purest way to love them.  Because attention is not dictation.  There's a point in which you only pay attention to your children; you're not instructing them anymore.  And that makes sense to me as a parent and a child.

-- Stephen Colbert, "The Triumph of Stephen Colbert"

Quote of the Day

Capitalism is a remarkable tool for generating mass wealth, but the moment you mistake it for a structure that can deliver a just and coherent society, you're an idiot.

-- David Simon, "The Last Word"

Quote of the Day

As a Catholic, I was taught that the worst thing was heresy because not only are you sinning, you're also dragging somebody else into your sinful state.  Well, Donald Trump is a heretic against reality; he lives in this fantasy world where only his emotions count and therefore only his reality is real.  But he's also saying, "Everybody else, your reality isn't real."  And so all you have to do is go, like "Hey, [audience], you're not crazy."  That's the thesis statement [of my show].  Your reactions, your emotions are valid -- you actually feel that way.  The world is as you perceive it.  Don't let anybody say you're crazy.  This is not what America is meant to be about.

-- Stephen Colbert, "The Triumph of Stephen Colbert"

Quote of the Day

In his 2016 campaign, the American president used the slogan "America First," which is the name of a committee that sought to prevent the United States from opposing Nazi Germany.  

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 123

Quote of the Day

Democracy failed in Europe in the 1920s, '30s, and '40s, and it is failing not only in much of Europe but in many parts of the world today.  It is that history and experience that reveals to us the dark range of our possible futures.  A nationalist will say that "it can't happen here," which is the first step toward disaster.  A patriot says that it could happen here, but that we will stop it.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 114

Quote of the Day

Nationalism is relativist, since the only truth is the resentment we feel when we contemplate others.  As the novelist Danilo Kis put it, nationalism "has no universal values, aesthetic or ethical."

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 114

Quote of the Day

The president is a nationalist, which is not at all the same thing as a patriot.  A nationalist encourages us to be our worst, and then tell us that we are the best.  A nationalist, "although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge," wrote [George] Orwell, tends to be "uninterested in what happens in the real world."

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 113-114

Quote of the Day

The point is not that Russia and America must be enemies.  The point is that patriotism involves serving your own country.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 113

Quote of the Day

It is not patriotic to admire foreign dictators.  It is not patriotic to cultivate a relationship with Muammar Gaddafi; or to say that Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin are superior leaders.  It is not patriotic to call upon Russia to intervene in an American presidential election.  It is not patriotic to cite Russian propaganda at rallies.  It is not patriotic to share an adviser with Russian oligarchs.  It is not patriotic to solicit foreign policy advice from someone who owns shares in a Russian energy company.  It is not patriotic to read a foreign policy speech written by someone on the payroll of a Russian energy company.  It is not patriotic to appoint a national security adviser who has taken money from a Russian propaganda organ.  It is not patriotic to appoint as secretary of state an oilman with Russian financial interests who is the director of a Russian-American energy company and has received the "Order of Friendship" from Putin.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 112-113

Quote of the Day

What is patriotism?  Let us begin with what patriotism is not.  It is not patriotic to dodge the draft and to mock war heroes and their families.  It is not patriotic to discriminate against active-duty members of the armed forces in one's companies, or to campaign to keep disabled veterans away from one's property.  It is not patriotic to compare one's search for sexual partners in New York with the military service in Vietnam that one has dodged.  It is not patriotic to avoid paying taxes, especially when American working families do pay.  It is not patriotic to ask those working, taxpaying American families to finance one's own presidential campaign, and then spend their contributions in one's own companies.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 112

Quote of the Day

For tyrants, the lesson of the [German] Reichstag fire [of 1933] is that one moment of shock enables an eternity of submission.  For us, the lesson is that our natural fear and grief must not enable the destruction of our institutions.  Courage does not mean not fearing, or not grieving.  It does mean recognizing and resisting terror management right away, from the moment of the attack, precisely when it seems most difficult to do so.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 110

Quote of the Day

When the American president and his national security adviser speak of fighting terrorism alongside Russia, what they are proposing to the American people is terror management: the exploitation of real, dubious, and simulated terror attacks to bring down democracy.  The Russian recap of the first telephone call between the president and Vladimir Putin is telling: The two men "shared the opinion that it is necessary to join forces against the common enemy number one: international terrorism and extremism."

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 109-110

Quote of the Day

The authoritarians of today are also terror managers, and if anything they are rather more creative [than Hitler].  Consider the current Russian regime, so admired by the president.  Vladimir Putin not only came to power in an incident that strikingly resembled the [German] Reichstag fire, he then used a series of terror attacks -- real, questionable, and fake -- to remove obstacles to total power in Russia and to assault democratic neighbors.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 105

Quote of the Day

Hitler had used an act of terror, [the Reichstag fire], an event of limited inherent significance, to institute a regime of terror that killed millions of people and changed the world.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 105

Quote of the Day

Modern tyranny is terror management.  When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power.  The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book.  Do not fall for it.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 103

Quote of the Day

Modern authoritarian regimes, such as Russia, use laws on extremism to punish those who criticize their policies.  In this way the notion of extremism comes to mean virtually everything except what is, in fact, extreme: tyranny.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 102

Quote of the Day

When (politicians) try to train us to surrender freedom in the name of safety, we should be on our guard.  There is no necessary tradeoff between the two.  Sometimes we do indeed gain one by losing the other, and sometimes not.  People who assure you that you can only gain security at the price of liberty usually want to deny you both.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 100

Quote of the Day

Totalitarianism removes the difference between private and public not just to make individuals unfree, but also to draw the whole society away from normal politics and toward conspiracy theories.  Rather than defining facts or generating interpretations, we are seduced by the notion of hidden realities and dark conspiracies that explain everything.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 89-90

Quote of the Day

Once malice is embraced as a virtue, it is impossible to contain.

-- Adam Serwer, "The Cruelty Is the Point"

Quote of the Day

What the great political thinker Hannah Arendt meant by totalitarianism was not an all-powerful state, but the erasure of the difference between private and public life.  We are free only insofar as we exercise control over what people know about us, and in what circumstances they come to know it.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 88

Quote of the Day

The choice to be in public depends on the ability to maintain a private sphere of life.  We are free only when it is we ourselves who draw the line between when we are seen and when we are not seen.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 86

Quote of the Day

Protest can be organized through social media, but nothing is real that does not end on the streets.  If tyrants feel no consequences for their actions in the three-dimensional world, nothing will change.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 84

Quote of the Day

We do not see the minds that we hurt when we publish falsehoods, but that does not mean we do no harm.  Think of driving a car.  We may not see the other driver, but we know not to run into his car.  We know that the damage will be mutual.  We protect the other person without seeing him, dozens of times every day.  Likewise, although we may not see the other person in front of his or her computer, we have our share of responsibility for what he or she is reading there.  If we can avoid doing violence to the minds of unseen others on the internet, others will learn to do the same.  And then perhaps our internet traffic will cease to look like one great, bloody accident.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 79-80

Quote of the Day

We find it natural that we pay for a plumber or a mechanic, but demand our news for free.  If we did not pay for plumbing or auto repair, we would not expect to drink water or drive cars.  Why then should we form our political judgment on the basis of zero investment?  We get what we pay for.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 77

Quote of the Day

While anyone can repost an article, researching and writing is hard work that requires time and money.  Before you deride the "mainstream media," note that it is no longer the mainstream.  It is derision that is mainstream and easy, and actual journalism that is edgy and difficult.  So try for yourself to write a proper article, involving work in the real world: traveling, interviewing, maintaining relationships with sources, researching in written records, verifying everything, writing and revising drafts, all on a tight and unforgiving schedule.  If you find you like doing this, keep a blog.  In the meantime, give credit to those who do all of that for a living.  Journalists are not perfect, any more than people in other vocations are perfect.  But the work of people who adhere to journalistic ethics is of a different quality than the work of those who do not.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 76-77

Quote of the Day

It is more rewarding to watch money change the world than watch it accumulate.

-- Gloria Steinem

Quote of the Day

We need print journalists so that stories can develop on the page and in our minds.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 75

Quote of the Day

I had to recognize my own dignity as a lesbian before I could be truly effective as an advocate.  Those brave queens at Stonewall had to fight back in 1969 so that they would no longer be subject to arrest simply for being gay.  Evan Wolfson, while still a student at Harvard Law School, had to have the vision to write a paper in 1983 entitled "Samesex Marriage and Morality: The Human Rights Vision of the Constitution."  Mary Bonauto had to bring those first cases in Vermont and Massachusetts when many thought she was being reckless, crazy, or both.  Edie Windsor had to stand up and sue the United States of America to honor her marriage to Thea Spyer.  Jim Obergefell in Ohio and Carla Webb and Joce Pritchett in Mississippi had to go to court to have their marriages legally acknowledged.  Countless other gay men and lesbians had to step forward and demand that their dignity be recognized by their families, neighbors, colleagues, and finally their own government.  And, together, we changed the world.

-- Roberta Kaplan, Then Comes Marriage, p. 322-323

Quote of the Day

During his campaign, the president claimed on a Russian propaganda outlet that American "media has been unbelievably dishonest."  He banned many reporters from his rallies, and regularly elicited hatred of journalists from the public.  Like the leaders of authoritarian regimes, he promised to suppress freedom of speech by laws that would prevent criticism.  Like Hitler, the president used the words lies to mean statements of fact not to his liking, and presented journalism as a campaign against himself.  The president was on friendlier terms with the internet, his source for erroneous information that he passed on to millions of people.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 73-74

Quote of the Day

In the end, [our legal team's mantra] "it's all about Edie" is really only another way of saying that it's all about dignity.  While cases, precedents, and constitutional doctrine matter, so do the lives of people targeted by discriminatory laws.

-- Roberta Kaplan, Then Comes Marriage, p. 322

Quote of the Day

The individual who investigates is also the citizen who builds.  The leader who dislikes the investigators is a potential tyrant.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 73

A Post for Posterity: Meeting Frank Schaeffer

Four years ago today, Oct. 10, 2014, I had the pleasure of hearing one of my favorite authors/speakers, Frank Schaeffer, at Vanderbilt University.  I was honored to meet him and hear him discuss his latest book (at that time), Why I Am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to Give Love, Create Beauty and Find Peace.

Quote of the Day

All it takes is one person ... and another ... and another ... and another ... to start a movement.

-- Abraham Joshua Heschel

Salt and Pepper

I was thrilled to hear one of my favorite "salty" authors/speakers, Frank Schaeffer, again last night, along with "peppery" pastor/writer John Pavlovitz, during the Vote Common Good event in Holland, Mich.

Quote of the Day

Generic cynicism makes us feel hip and alternative even as we slip along with our fellow citizens into a morass of indifference.  It is your ability to discern facts that makes you an individual, and our collective trust in common knowledge that makes us a society.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 73

Quote of the Day

Sometimes it's the simplest and most obvious things that say the most.

-- Roberta Kaplan, Then Comes Marriage, p. 293

Quote of the Day

Fascists despised the small truths of daily existence, loved slogans that resonated like a new religion, and preferred creative myths to history or journalism.  They used new media, which at the time was radio, to create a drumbeat of propaganda that aroused feelings before people had time to ascertain facts.  And now, as then, many people confused faith in a hugely flawed leader with the truth about the world we all share.  Post-truth is pre-fascism.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 71

Quote of the Day

In large part, the reason for this sea change in attitudes toward gay people is the fact that until recently, many Americans simply did not realize that they knew anyone who was gay.  Because of the string of social disapproval and the persistence of discrimination in nearly every facet of everyday existence, for most of the twentieth century and continuing even today, many gay people have lived their lives in the closet so as not to risk losing a job, a home, or the love and support of family and friends.  Without the benefit of knowing and understanding the lives of gay people living openly and with dignity in their communities, many Americans failed to see that gay people and their families have the same aspirations to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as everyone else.

-- Roberta Kaplan, Then Comes Marriage, p. 283

Quote of the Day

What terrified [totalitarianism observer Victor] Klemperer was the way that this transition [from the small truths of individual discernment and experience to misplaced faith] seemed permanent.  Once truth had become oracular rather than factual, evidence was irrelevant.  At the end of the war a worker told Klemperer that "understanding is useless, you have to have faith.  I believe in the Fuhrer."

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 68-69

Quote of the Day

It is hard to explain to people who have never had to hide a key element of themselves how corrosive it is.  It is not simply that you do not allow others -- your family, your friends, your neighbors -- to truly know you.  It is also that you give up on knowing yourself.  And you give up on that which makes you most human: your capacity to give and accept love.

-- Roberta Kaplan, Then Comes Marriage, p. 27

Quote of the Day

The president's campaign involved the promises of cutting taxes for everyone, eliminating the national debt, and increasing spending on both social policy and national defense.  These promises mutually contradict.  It is as if a farmer said he were taking an egg from the henhouse, boiling it whole and serving it to his wife, and also poaching it and serving it to his children, and then returning it to the hen unbroken, and then watching as the chick hatches.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 67-68

Quote of the Day

my heartbeat quickens at
the thought of birthing poems
which is why I will never stop
opening myself up to conceive them...

-- Rupi Kaur, Milk and Honey, p. 200

Quote of the Day

At rallies, the repeated chants of "Build that wall" and "Lock her up" did not describe anything that the president had specific plans to do, but their very grandiosity established a connection between him and his audience.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 67

Quote of the Day

how you love yourself is
how you teach others
to love you

-- Rupi Kaur, Milk and Honey, p. 186

Quote of the Day

The systematic use of nicknames such as "Lyin' Ted" and "Crooked Hillary" displaced certain character traits that might more appropriately have been affixed to the president himself.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 67

Quote of the Day

Many Americans wrongly think of the military as the exclusive, or primary, guardian of American pride and patriotism.  However, only in a totalitarian society does the military define, instead of defend, what it means to be American.  We must never lose the battle for democracy in such careless formulations.  We must not surrender to bullets and bombs what can only be had by belief and behavior -- like the encouragement of dissent, the tolerance of wide disagreement about what it means to be American, and the freedom to protest for freedom. 

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 248-249

Quote of the Day

As [totalitarianism observer Victor] Klemperer noted, the fascist style depends upon "endless repetition," designed to make the fictional plausible and the criminal desirable.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 66-67

Quote of the Day

Ironically, [Colin] Kaepernick has been accused of disrespecting an American flag that was long ago replaced by the Confederate flag for millions of white southerners.  Those who hoist the Confederate flag indulge in romantic treason -- since it is the emblem of secession from our country -- often at, or on the way to, American football stadiums.  He is said, too, to dishonor military veterans, though it is hard to see how, since the very freedoms for which they fought guarantee Kaepernick his dissent.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 248

Quote of the Day

You submit to tyranny when you renounce the difference between what you want to hear and what is actually the case.  This renunciation of reality can feel natural and pleasant, but the result is your demise as an individual -- and thus the collapse of any political system that depends upon individualism.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 66

Quote of the Day

Black art couldn't help but be political as its creation rebutted a philosophy that doubted its existence.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 89

Quote of the Day

To abandon facts is to abandon freedom.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 65

Quote of the Day

[To] be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time. 

-- James Baldwin

Quote of the Day

Influential Americans such as Charles Lindbergh opposed war with the Nazis under the slogan "America First."

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 52

Quote of the Day

... [James] Baldwin predicted the forces that would one day lead to the return of xenophobic white nationalism, to the rise of Donald Trump.  But to say Baldwin was ahead of his time is to miss his point: America will always need a martyr, a prophet -- a Malcolm, a Martin.  The powerful will always seek to silence that prophet, trying to achieve the nation's redemption on the cheap -- not through self-correction, but through crimson-stained violence that sacrifices the Other, whether black or brown or queer or immigrant.  Fifty years after one lone prophet who didn't make it to forty gave up the ghost on a bland balcony in Memphis, King's legacy, and Baldwin's words, are as urgent as ever.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 8

Quote of the Day

Stand out.  Someone has to.  It is easy to follow along.  It can feel strange to do or say something different.  But without that unease, there is no freedom.  Remember Rosa Parks.  The moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 51

Quote of the Day

In Wakanda, we finally get the chance to just be -- like white folk can, and do, every day of their lives.  Yes, it's true, white folk have a Wakanda, too, but its name is different, because, even though it's chock full of myths, ideals, tales, and potions, it actually exists in real time, with real flesh and blood, with real cities and realities attached to it.  It's name is democracy.  Its name is Iowa, or New York.  Its name is bread, and car, and air, and speech, and school, and law and travel and society; in other words, whatever and wherever whiteness exists and is seen as normal and necessary, as usual, as taken for granted, as presumed, as invisible and unaccountable and, therefore, not necessary to be named Wakanda.  Fantasy ain't needed when reality already provides what fiction aims for.  Wakanda is necessary for us because our black lives are seen as anything but.  Wakanda matters because black lives don't.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 271-272

Quote of the Day

Every large-scale shooting action of the Holocaust (more than thirty-three thousand Jews murdered outside Kyiv, more than twenty-eight thousand outside Riga, and on and on) involved regular German police. 

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 50

Quote of the Day

... works of art have always inspired us to see ourselves in ways that aren't permitted when ruthless and narrow versions of reality pass for truth.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 277

Quote of the Day

Be reflective if you must be armed.  If you carry a weapon in public service, may God bless you and keep you.  But know that evils of the past involved policemen and soldiers finding themselves, one day, doing irregular things.  Be ready to say no.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 47

Quote of the Day

I believe that most of the ills that I address in this book -- the racism, the sexism, the homophobia -- can be engaged, if not relieved, if we, yes, reread [James] Baldwin and scores of really smart black intellectuals, including Robin D. G. Kelley and Farah Jasmine Griffin, and if we elect good politicians like Kamala Harris, Andrea Jenkins, Ras Baraka, and Eric Holder, and if we listen to great artists like Jay-Z and Beyonce, and Kendrick [Lamar] and Rapsody.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 269

Quote of the Day

Nazi storm troopers began as a security detail clearing the halls of Hitler's opponents during his rallies ... As a candidate, the president ordered a private security detail to clear opponents from rallies, but also encouraged the audience itself to remove people who expressed different opinions ... The candidate interjected: "Isn't this more fun than a regular boring rally?  To me, it's fun."  This kind of mob violence was meant to transform the political atmosphere, and it did.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 44-45

Quote of the Day

Bobby [Kennedy] learned to see race as more than a political matter and began to see racism as [James] Baldwin and his group [of prominent black artists, activists, and intellectuals who met with Bobby in the spring of 1963] had urged him to see it: as moral rot at the heart of the American empire.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 264

Quote of the Day

It is impossible to carry out democratic elections, try cases at court, design and enforce laws, or indeed manage any of the other quiet business of government when agencies beyond the state also have access to violence.  For just this reason, people and parties who wish to undermine democracy and the rule of law create and fund violent organizations that involve themselves in politics.  Such groups can take the form of a paramilitary wing of a political party, the personal bodyguard of a particular politician -- or apparently spontaneous citizens' initiatives, which usually turn out to have been organized by a party or its leader.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 43

Quote of the Day

(Substantive social transformation in our country) cannot happen without agitation and resistance, without protest and uncomfortable moments of reckoning.  [Colin] Kaepernick's legacy resides far beyond the gridiron he deserves to play on; it resides in the spiral of social awareness and public conscience that his poignant protest has unleashed.  Like [Jackie] Robinson, and [Muhammad] Ali, and so many others, his inspiring example rallies many more to muster the courage to face down oppression in our land.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 262

Quote of the Day

If lawyers had followed the norm of no execution without trial, if doctors had accepted the rule of no surgery without consent, if businessmen had endorsed the prohibition of slavery, if bureaucrats had refused to handle paperwork involving murder, then the Nazi regime would have been much harder pressed to carry out the atrocities by which we remember it.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 40

Quote of the Day

What President Trump's Twitter fingers reveal, what his twitchy, apoplectic outrage proves, is that he is, perhaps, the most unpatriotic of all American presidents.  But his perverted vision of patriotism cannot stop the efforts of the truly righteous.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 259

Quote of the Day

The history of lapel pins is far from innocent.  In Nazi Germany in 1933, people wore lapel pins that said "Yes" during the elections and referendum that confirmed the one-party state.  In Austria in 1938, people who had not previously been Nazis began to wear swastika pins.  What might seem like a gesture of pride can be a source of exclusion.  In the Europe of the 1930s and '40s, some people chose to wear swastikas, and then others had to wear yellow stars. 

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 35

Quote of the Day

A black person often has to be a superstar athlete and beloved icon to enjoy only some of the perks that many white folk can take for granted at birth.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 253

Quote of the Day

The wish that Jews might disappear, perhaps suppressed at first, rose as it was leavened by greed.  Thus the Germans who marked shops as "Jewish" participated in the process by which Jews really did disappear -- as did people who simply looked on.  Accepting the markings as a natural part of the urban landscape was already a compromise with a murderous future.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 34-35

Quote of the Day

It makes sense for athletes to raise their voices beyond the field of play.  If they have built up cultural capital and garnered enormous success, it means that considerable quarters of white America are not only paying -- they are paying attention.  The money athletes make may not be as important as the mark they can leave on the minds of those who admire them.  Therefore, many of them are compelled to speak up for justice, equality, and opportunity.  It makes sense for them to do so: they know that the black people who are unknown to the masses of white folk are deserving of the same decency and respect that they are given.  Thus, they can leverage their influence and fame on behalf of the black folk whose love and nurture made them stars.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 252-253

Quote of the Day

Life is political, not because the world cares about how you feel, but because the world reacts to what you do.  The minor choices we make are themselves a kind of vote, making it more or less likely that free and fair elections will be held in the future.  In the politics of the everyday, our words and gestures, or their absence, count very much.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 33

Meeting Anna-Lisa Cox

I had the honor of hearing award-winning historian, author and Harvard University fellow Anna-Lisa Cox speak last night at Uncommon Coffee Roasters about her groundbreaking new book, The Bone and Sinew of the Land.

Quote of the Day

[Jackie] Robinson, [Larry] Doby, Campy [Roy Campanella], and [Don] Newcombe were the easiest translation of what the civil rights movement aimed for: give black folk a chance, treat us fairly, make one set of rules for us all to abide by, and we will do well.  In our day, what [Colin] Kaepernick and his cohort are shooting for is similar: don't assume black people are thugs, don't fear us because we are black, give us a chance to live as we explain ourselves to the police. 

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 252

Quote of the Day

The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow.  Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate.  Do not look away, and do not get used to them.  Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 32

Quote of the Day

The billy club and the baseball bat are competing weapons in the war for the mind of white America.  The brutal swing of the billy club on besieged black bodies can be symbolically fought by the sweet swing of a black star at the plate.  If baseball was once America's pastime, so, too, was hatred, and fear, of black people.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 251-252

Quote of the Day

Will we in retrospect see the elections of 2016 much as Russians see the elections of 1990, or Czechs the elections of 1946, or Germans the elections of 1932?  This, for now, depends upon us.  Much needs to be done to fix the gerrymandered system so that each citizen has one equal vote, and so that each vote can be simply counted by a fellow citizen.  We need paper ballots, because they cannot be tampered with remotely and can always be recounted.  This sort of work can be done at the local and state levels.  We can be sure that the elections of 2018, assuming they take place, will be a test of American traditions.  So there is much to do in the meantime.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 30-31

Quote of the Day

"You'll never know how easy you and Jackie and [Larry] Doby and Campy [Roy Campanella] made it for me to do my job by what you did on the baseball field," Martin Luther King, Jr. said to baseball superstar Don Newcombe a few weeks before King was assassinated in Memphis in 1968.  Newcombe was humbled.  "Imagine, here is Martin getting beaten with billy clubs, bitten by dogs and thrown in jail, and he says we made his job easier."

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 251

Quote of the Day

Where annual elections end, tyranny begins.

-- Early American proverb

Quote of the Day

Americans who are angry with Colin Kaepernick often forget how black entertainers and athletes have used their fame to break down barriers of discrimination.  Singer Ray Charles helped to desegregate concert halls; Jackie Robinson integrated an entire league.  Entertainers and athletes also helped to combat fear of black culture and encouraged the acceptance of black talent.  They did something even more crucial that continues to this day: they convinced white America that the folk these athletes loved and admired were just as worthy of support and respect.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 249-250

Quote of the Day

We (Americans) believe that we have checks and balances, but have rarely faced a situation like the present: when the less popular of the two parties controls every lever of power at the federal level, as well as the majority of statehouses.  The party that exercises such control proposes few policies that are popular with the society at large, and several that are generally unpopular -- and thus must either fear democracy or weaken it.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 30

Quote of the Day

[If] I had to choose tomorrow between the Baseball Hall of Fame and full citizenship for my people, I would choose full citizenship time and again.

-- Jackie Robinson

Quote of the Day

The odd American idea that giving money to political campaigns is free speech means that the very rich have far more speech, and so in effect far more voting power, than other citizens.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 29-30

Quote of the Day

When former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick decided to kneel during the performance of the national anthem to pay homage to black victims of police brutality, closing the gulf between patriotic ideals and the reality of black suffering, he was, predictably, pilloried.  Kaepernick was met with the same charges of most every black person -- whether it was Frederick Douglass or Barack Obama, Sojourner Truth or Maxine Waters, Jack Johnson or football player Malcolm Jenkins -- who dared speak out against injustice: that he is un-American, unpatriotic, disrespectful, and ungrateful.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 247

Quote of the Day

When fascists or Nazis or communists did well in elections in the 1930s or '40s, what followed was some combination of spectacle, repression, and salami tactics -- slicing off layers of opposition one by one.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 28

Quote of the Day

We prefer our heroes dead or quiet; Muhammad Ali's silenced tongue surely hurried him into an iconic space that may have been impossible to occupy had he been able to continue to raise his voice against injustice.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 246

Quote of the Day

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

-- Wendell Phillips

Quote of the Day

America has always been in love with change in reverse, in the safely settled past, not the dangerously changeable present.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 246

Quote of the Day

Thomas Jefferson probably never said that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," but other Americans of his era certainly did.  When we think of this saying today, we imagine our own righteous vigilance directed outward, against misguided and hostile others.  We see ourselves as a city on the hill, a stronghold of democracy, looking out for threats that come from abroad.  But the sense of the saying was entirely different: that human nature is such that American democracy must be defended from Americans who would exploit its freedoms to bring about its end.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 27

Quote of the Day

Shedding tears over Muhammad Ali's death while ignoring the tears of those who suffer today soils Ali's heroic legacy; extolling Ali's courage as a spokesman for truth while pillorying those who dare tell the truth now is a rejection of Ali too.  Black protest is a form of black humanitarianism and, in fact, is its prelude and often its most righteous incarnation.  The critical effort to see black folk as humane, as viable participants in humanitarian enterprise, is a political battle. 

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 244-245

Quote of the Day

Beware the one-party state.  The parties that remade states and suppressed rivals were not omnipotent from the start.  They exploited a historic moment to make political life impossible for their opponents.  So support the multi-party system and defend the rules of democratic elections.  Vote in local and state elections while you can.  Consider running for office.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 26

Quote of the Day

As America caught up to Muhammad Ali's political vision, it pushed closer to a redemptive core: humanitarianism is not a substitute for justice, but may be one measure of its fulfillment.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 243

Quote of the Day

Sometimes institutions are deprived of vitality and function, turned into a simulacrum of what they once were, so that they gird the new order rather than resisting it.  This is what the Nazis called Gleichschaltung.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 24

Quote of the Day

Like the great thinkers and leaders who preceded him -- from Du Bois, to Anna Julia Cooper, to Ida B. Wells-Barnett, to Paul Robeson, to Pauli Murray, and to King and Malcolm -- Ali's embrace of the world's beleaguered and downtrodden masses forced the nation to come to grips with its foul treatment of its own citizens of color.  Thus, like those figures, Ali's insistence that America do the right thing was far more loyal to the nation's ideals than those figures who savaged the once-deposed champ in the name of American patriotism.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 242-243

Quote of the Day

The mistake is to assume that rulers who came to power through institutions cannot change or destroy those very institutions -- even when that is exactly what they have announced that they will do.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 24

Quote of the Day

James Baldwin argued that until black heroes became the heroes of white America, a bitterness would rage that would destroy the ghetto and the larger city.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 230

Quote of the Day

Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram grasped that people are remarkably receptive to new rules in a new setting.  They are surprisingly willing to harm and kill others in the service of some new purpose if they are so instructed by a new authority.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 21

Quote of the Day

The unfortunate surrender of the black left to ideological purity has lessened its use to the black masses, forgetting a lesson that James Baldwin and his fellow thinkers and activists never forgot: the point of witness, and the policy that it informs, is, always, the achievement of justice for the black folk witnesses claim to speak for.  Anything less than that, any idea other than that, is but a roadblock to genuine change.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 228

Quote of the Day

After the German elections of 1932, which permitted Adolf Hitler to form a government, or the Czechoslovak elections of 1946, where communists were victorious, the next crucial step was anticipatory obedience.  Because enough people in both cases voluntarily extended their services to the new leaders, Nazis and communists alike realized that they could move quickly toward a full regime change.  The first heedless acts of conformity could not then be reversed.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 18

Quote of the Day

If segments of the black left harshly criticized Clinton for her neoliberal policies, they should have far greater reason to lament the racist policies of the Trump administration.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 224

Quote of the Day

Do not obey in advance.  Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given.  In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked.  A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.

-- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, p. 17

Quote of the Day

It is even more irresponsible for black activists and thinkers to argue that there was little difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump; that, as Cornel West put it, Trump was "a neo-fascist catastrophe" and Clinton was "a neo-liberal disaster."  Such thinking helped open the door to a man whose policies and personal witness are rooted in racist thinking.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 223

Quote of the Day

Don't make the mistake of comparing your twisted-up insides to people's blow-dried outsides.  

-- Mary Karr

Quote of the Day

In politics, being deceived is no excuse.

-- Leszek Kolakowski

Meeting Kate Moynihan

I had the pleasure of hearing artist/author Kate Moynihan speak last night at the Herrick District Library.  Having been a fan of Moynihan Gallery for many years, it was a treat to meet Kate and have her sign my copy of her new memoir, A Lone Birch: My Artistic Journey.

Quote of the Day

If Bill Clinton gave black America bad policy and Obama gave black America no policy, then Hillary Clinton made the effort to offer good policy.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 213

Quote of the Day

In a sense, Hillary Clinton emerged at what seemed like a strikingly unpropitious moment.  Her strengths -- the boring, the tedious, the serious attention to the small gestures that make big impacts -- seemed ill-suited to the unruly temper of the times.  But this perceived liability might have been her strongest recommendation to the black masses: She may have offered strict attention to policy that unapologetically played to black needs without ever feeling pressure -- as Obama did -- to disown, to begrudge the style of, explicit black advance.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 213

Quote of the Day

Obama argued that what was good for America was good for black folk, when exactly the opposite is true: helping black folk helps America.  Tamping down the war on drugs, which targeted black and brown folk, also spared millions of white youth hooked on methamphetamines and has created enormous empathy for white folk who confront opioid addition.  Strengthening the social safety net for our most vulnerable black and brown citizens also helped struggling white families hit hard by the recession.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 212

Quote of the Day

The palpable discomfort that demonstrations produce forces our political figures to grapple with new ideas.  This is a productive tension.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 207

Quote of the Day

Nothing in this country that has progressed has happened without the politics of disruption.  You can go to the Boston Tea Party: that's the politics of disruption.  The ending of slavery was through the politics of disruption.  Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin -- that disrupted the psyche of a country that called itself a democracy. 

-- Frederick Haynes

Quote of the Day

It is critical to listen, even if one greatly disagrees, not only to plot further strategy and determine if what one argues is effective, but, equally important, to embody the values one seeks to impart.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 205

Quote of the Day

Black witness is always perceived as unjustified rage.  Blackness has no victims in white eyes and therefore has no right to bear witness to whiteness at all.  Bearing witness to racial injustice is always perceived as a direct threat to white supremacy and is therefore an act of hostility that must be neutralized.  One of Black Lives Matter's greatest contributions is to bear witness to the trauma black folk endure but that is often rendered invisible. 

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 201

Quote of the Day

The Black Lives Matter activists insist on the unity of politics and morality: The racist act is connected to the racist intent; the murdering hand is connected to the murderous heart.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 199

Quote of the Day

Witness often exposes the unspoken claims of whiteness -- its privilege to hide, its ability to deflect black suffering into comparatively sterile discussions of policy that take the heat off of "me" and put it on "that."

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 196

Quote of the Day

It should be remembered that the civil rights movement shocked the American system.  Martin Luther King may have a statue in his memory on the National Mall, but the FBI considered him "the most dangerous Negro" in America.  His fellow activists were hosed, beaten, bitten by dogs, even murdered -- sometimes with the help of law enforcement, more often as they looked the other way in cruel indifference.  Black witness was an affront to American denial, the black bid for equality salt in the ongoing wound of Confederate loss. 

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 195-196

Quote of the Day

The moral dimensions of race exert a profound influence on how we distribute social goods, apply public policy and laws, and determine the worth and value of human life.  It is already against the law for the police to unjustly murder black folk.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 188-189

Quote of the Day

For scholars, there is a depth that can only be tapped through the rigorous reworking of the same sentences until the meaning comes clean -- or as clean as one can make it.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 164

Quote of the Day

The role of the intellectual is to deepen inquiry and broaden understanding.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 163

Quote of the Day

It's been said that racism is so American that when we protest racism, some assume we're protesting America.

-- Beyonce

Quote of the Day

The reason we're in the fraught political and social time that we're in right now is because the old guard is dying.  And the old guard is not in a position to regain power.  It's trying.  I'm a full believer that what we're experiencing now are the last gasps.  

-- Keegan-Michael Key

Quote of the Day

If you have no interest in equal rights for black people, then do not make suggestions for those who do.  Sit down.

-- Jesse Williams

Quote of the Day

I don't want to hear any more about how far we've come when paid public servants can pull a drive-by on a 12-year-old [Tamir Rice] playing alone in the park in broad daylight, killing him on television and then going home to make a sandwich.

-- Jesse Williams

Quote of the Day

Police somehow manage to deescalate, disarm, and not kill white people every day.

-- Jesse Williams

Quote of the Day

It is the writer's necessity to deal as truthfully as possible with his own experience, and it is his hope to enlarge his experience to contain the experience of others, of millions.

-- James Baldwin

Quote of the Day

Artists have a dual function: first, they know the truth of the human condition.  Second, artists prove, and help humanity to grapple with, the notion that [as James Baldwin argued] "safety is an illusion," thus "all artists are divorced from and even necessarily opposed to any system whatever."

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 90-91

Quote of the Day

(James Baldwin) argued that the artist must embrace the very thing most folk avoid: the aloneness of the human condition.  Part of what it means to be human is to wrestle with the aloneness of "birth, suffering, love, and death"; the artist must encourage folk to engage what they would rather avoid...

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 90

Quote of the Day

If American politics is to regain its juice, recapture its vigor, it must be pushed and shaped by vibrant figures who hold it accountable.  When [James] Baldwin and his friends confronted Bobby Kennedy, Kennedy got mad, but then anger gave way to honest reflection and sincere self-criticism.  Bobby had to reckon with the invisibility of black humanity, even to his own liberal eyes, especially his own privileged eyes.  But in that abrasive exchange with Baldwin and his friends, enough humanity seeped through to let him at least hear the echoes of their trauma.  And in that moment there was emotional movement on his part, if not full-blown transformation.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 86

Quote of the Day

I don't think we can afford to be in a silo and make progress . . . There would be no gay liberation movement if there wasn't a civil rights movement.  And the women's rights movement too.  So they all build on each other because they're all interrelated. I think the biggest enemy, and the biggest oppression, in my mind, in all of this, is white supremacy, patriarchy, which is closely related to sexism and religious subjugation, and if you get at all of that, all these other issues get resolved.

-- Andrea Jenkins

Quote of the Day

This administration isn't just targeting the laws that protect us; they are targeting the very idea that we are all worthy of protection.  For them, dignity isn't something you're born with but something you measure, by...the gender of your spouse, the country of your birth, the color of your skin, the God of your prayers.

-- Joseph Kennedy

Quote of the Day

Only when we have a full-throated voicing of our vibrant democracy in all of its splendidly cantankerous diversity can we truly claim at last to be American.

-- Joseph Kennedy

Quote of the Day

You can't talk about the history of race in America without talking about slavery.  It's the sin, the blemish, a shameful part of our history.  To talk about race in America requires one to face truth in terms of the disparities that exist based on race.  And the truth makes people very uncomfortable.  There's a natural desire to have conversations where everyone walks away feeling lovely, and it's been pleasant.  But not so much when you're talking about race.

-- Kamala Harris

Quote of the Day

The truth is that American politics has hardly neglected the interests of the white working and middle classes.  The progress experienced under the banner of the movement for racial, gender, and sexual justice has forced white folks to share just a little of their bounty with blacks, Latinos, women, and queer folk.  To be sure, these groups are hardly homogenous or univocal.  Yet concern for their own interests leads whites to think of their well being at the expense of other groups, compromising the nation's democratic health.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 68

Quote of the Day

Many whites now see the truth because they believe that what Trump is doing is deeply and profoundly flawed, even lunatic.  His obsessions and perverse preoccupations are the stuff of a whiteness that never had to be held accountable.  Trump's total lack of knowledge, and the enshrinement of ignorance as the basis of power and authority, is the personification of white supremacy and white arrogance.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 63-64

Quote of the Day

Recently, as bigotry resurfaces, symbolized in the events in Charlottesville in August 2017, the lie is put to the belief that "this is not American, this is not us," when, indeed, it truly is.  We do not want to acknowledge how true it is because it makes us look complicit in prejudice we thought we had gotten over.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 62

Quote of the Day

For those who take solace in the belief that Trump is a marginal player in whiteness, they are sadly mistaken.  He is, indeed, the extension of the logic of American ideas about blackness found at the nation's roots and beginnings.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 61

Quote of the Day

The white refusal to concede Obama's legitimacy was the articulation of the deeply rooted refusal to see blackness as American.  Donald Trump's birtherism was the extended unfolding of such an idea.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 61

Quote of the Day

When Robert Kennedy met with James Baldwin and his friends [in 1963], he weathered a heady downpour of racial and political truths that we still confront today: that politics, and the state, exist to defend white interests and identities; that witness is an important means to express black grievance and resistance and to shape public policy; that dormant and resurgent white bigotry, even at the highest level of government, must be identified and opposed; and that a new politics must be formed to fulfill true democracy.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 53

Quote of the Day

It was common for white folk to tell their views to black folk: black people constantly, endlessly, helplessly listened, listened, listened, and then listened some more -- as servants, friends, colleagues, and allies, even -- to white folks' fears, desperation, and desires; their hopes, hates, and highs; their lows, too; their depression and exhilaration, their plans and pains, their utterly ordinary and unsurprisingly mediocre lives.  They did so without pausing or being asked to speak of their own lives and fears, their own apprehensions and terrors, their own deferred dreams and chilling nightmares -- the way something as simple as the slip of a tongue, the glance of an eye, a whistle might send them to their graves, disappearing into the very nothingness that white folk never noticed they had come from or would return to without fanfare or acclaim, without the gentle recognition of their humanity or magic or majestic ordinariness.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like, p. 16

Quote of the Day

When we meet other women who seem happier, more successful, and more confident than we are, it's all too easy to hate them for it [because we understand it to mean that] there's less for us.  When you meet a woman who is intimidatingly witty, stylish, beautiful, and professionally accomplished, befriend her.  Surrounding yourself with the best people doesn't make you look worse by comparison.  It makes you look better.

-- Ann Friedman

Quote of the Day

What criteria do we apply to properly designate the nature of "real" partnership?  Do two people have to have regular sexual contact and be driven by physical desire in order to rate as a couple?  Must they bring each other regular mutual sexual satisfaction?  Are they faithful to each other?  By those measures, many heterosexual marriages wouldn't qualify.  

-- Rebecca Traister, All the Single Ladies, p. 108

Quote of the Day

Suffragists had often staged political "pageants" in which they wore sashes emblazoned "Votes for Women."  But 1921, the year following the ratification of the 19th Amendment, brought a perversion of this display: the debut of the Miss America pageant, in which unmarried women showed off their decidedly apolitical attributes in competition against, as opposed to collaboration with, each other.

-- Rebecca Traister, All the Single Ladies, p. 62

Meeting Annie Spence

I had the pleasure of hearing librarian/author Annie Spence read from her delightful little book, Dear Fahrenheit 451: Love and Heartbreak in the Stacks, at the Herrick District Library last night.

Quote of the Day

Over a century in which women had exercised increasing independence, living more singly in the world than ever before, the movements that independent women had helped to power had resulted in the passage of the 14th, 15th, 18th and 19th Amendments to the Constitution.  They had reshaped the nation.

-- Rebecca Traister, All the Single Ladies, p. 58

Quote of the Day

The social crusades of the nineteenth century were made possible by the changing nature of female engagement with the world and new ideas about identity and dependence.

-- Rebecca Traister, All the Single Ladies, p. 51

Quote of the Day

There may be no greater testament to the suffocating power of marital expectation than the fact that, for a time, the banning of booze seemed a more practical recourse against spousal abuse than the reform of marriage law or redress of inequities within the home.

-- Rebecca Traister, All the Single Ladies, p. 49

Quote of the Day

Now more than ever, women are the most important political force in America.  We have enormous power to change the direction of this country, and it's time to use it.  Marching, knitting, and protesting are great.  But voting, and changing who is elected to office, is essential.  The women who come through the doors of Planned Parenthood health centers every day have a lot on their minds, above and beyond getting affordable, nonjudgmental health care: they want a safe neighborhood for their kids and an excellent public school system.  They want to earn a living wage, and work without facing harassment or abuse.  They want family leave and affordable child care.  They want to live in communities free from gun violence.  They deserve all this and more, and that's what I'll be fighting for.

-- Cecile Richards, Make Trouble, p. 263

Quote of the Day

Now the floodgates are open.  Women are talking publicly about subjects that were once off-limits, and refusing to tolerate the sexual assault and harassment that have been accepted for far too long and there's no going back.  As Mom used to say, "You can't unring a bell."  It shouldn't be up to women to dismantle the patriarchy, but we can't sit around and hope someone else does it either.  Feminist is not a passive label; it means speaking out and standing up for women everywhere, and also for yourself.  One woman calling out an injustice is powerful enough; when we raise our voices together, we can shake the status quo to its foundation.

-- Cecile Richards, Make Trouble, p. 262

Quote of the Day

Here's the good news: there has never been a better time to become an activist, agitator, or troublemaker.  I promise you, doing something -- whether it's showing up at a town hall meeting, getting some friends together to start your own organization, or just refusing to keep quiet about what you believe -- feels infinitely better than sitting on the sidelines.  Looking back on my life so far, the moments I regret most are the ones when I was too scared to take a chance -- the moments when I didn't know what to do, and so did nothing.

-- Cecile Richards, Make Trouble, p. 261-262

Quote of the Day

Any time you're trying to change the way things are or challenge the powers that be, it's going to be controversial.  That's been true in every organizing job I've ever had.  Often the work that's most worthwhile seems the most intractable and impossible.  But just because someone else hasn't figured it out yet doesn't mean you can't.  After all, if it was easy, someone else would be doing it.

-- Cecile Richards, Make Trouble, p. 211

Quote of the Day

Planned Parenthood is here for women who need health care, regardless of politics.  In fact, if you're a woman who finds a lump in your breast, politics is the furthest thing from your mind.

-- Cecile Richards, Make Trouble, p. 185

Quote of the Day

People often ask, "Why do this?  Why get up every day and do work that is so hard?" ... Being able to choose to do work that makes a difference is a privilege.

-- Cecile Richards, Make Trouble, p. 185

Quote of the Day

A lot of hardworking people -- especially women -- fall into the trap of thinking, "If I just stay at the office all night, I can do it all myself."  Those first months at Planned Parenthood quickly put any such thoughts to rest.  There were jobs I just could not do, no matter how late I worked or how committed I was.  To build the kind of organization I envisioned, I'd need to find people who had talent and expertise in areas I knew next to nothing about.  Then I'd need to step back and let them do their thing.

-- Cecile Richards, Make Trouble, p. 155

Quote of the Day

There are a ton of great ideas floating around the universe, but the ones that end up becoming reality are those someone commits to doing, no matter what.

-- Cecile Richards, Make Trouble, p. 124

Quote of the Day

Life isn't fair, but government should be.

-- Ann Richards

Quote of the Day

Frankly, I am surprised to find myself advising you and other women on how we can reach equality with men.  I spent most of my life thinking we were already there.  We are not.  For me, it took living through Hillary [Clinton]'s bewildering campaign and processing the factors behind her loss to understand that we are not there.  For other women, it was the promotion that never came, or the umpteenth time a male colleague was lauded for an idea that had been ignored when a woman suggested it earlier, or the most recent time you were told you are a good sport for staying later than all the men and being the one who did all "the real work" that showed us we are not there.  Some women I know -- particularly women who are black or brown, less wealthy, or older than I am -- have always understood we have not reached equality.

-- Jennifer Palmieri, Dear Madam President, p. 172-173

Quote of the Day

I was on fire.  I wanted to turn to people and say, "Does everybody know what's going on?  Isn't somebody going to do something about this?"  Then I realized: What if that somebody was me?  I'd never started anything other than the odd food co-op and antipollution group, but I realized that if I didn't do it, it probably wasn't going to happen.

-- Cecile Richards, Make Trouble, p. 107

Quote of the Day

Each of these women had more to risk than to gain by telling her [#MeToo] story, and did so anyway.  Each of them saw a reason to believe her words could make a difference, and they have.  Merely through the power of their words, these women had laid bare the true extent of sexually inappropriate male behavior in our culture, which in turn is forcing a zero-tolerance approach to the problem.  These women are writing a brand-new chapter in American history and radically changing the balance of power in the workplace, simply because they knew what had happened to them was unjust and decided that their own voices gave them the power to right an injustice.

-- Jennifer Palmieri, Dear Madam President, p. 134-135

Quote of the Day

You can't win unless you compete.

-- Cecile Richards, Make Trouble, p. 95

Quote of the Day

To those who ask why (women) waited so long to tell their [#MeToo] stories, I say the real question is, what gave them the courage to tell their stories even now?

-- Jennifer Palmieri, Dear Madam President, p. 134

Quote of the Day

It's easy to get caught up in the press and assume everyone else is as well, but I discovered that in most towns, people were busy just living their lives.  In those places we could make a big impact just by meeting people and listening to their concerns.  There's no better way to refute false attacks than to have a conversation with people and tell them what you know to be the truth.

-- Cecile Richards, Make Trouble, p. 86

Quote of the Day

In the end, much of the press ended up applauding (Hillary Clinton's) candor during her book tour.  Predictably, there were a lot of people who lamented that "if only we could have seen this Hillary during the campaign, things would have turned out different."  That's all bullshit.  She was always the same person.  We are the ones who perceive her differently in different situations.

-- Jennifer Palmieri, Dear Madam President, p. 129-130

Quote of the Day

(Men) say, "I work for an advertising firm and have never been in public office, but I'm going to run for Congress."  Women, on the other hand, say, "I was thinking about applying for that job, but I haven't finished my PhD yet."

-- Cecile Richards, Make Trouble, p. 83

Quote of the Day

Please understand that a lot of what the right does, and it's maybe their greatest genius, is they've created a code of conduct that they police, that they themselves don't have to, in any way, abide.

-- Jon Stewart, "Jon Stewart has a theory about the Samantha Bee controversy"

Quote of the Day

When it comes to pleasing the masses in a patriarchal society, women seeking power can't win playing by the old man-centric rules.  This is why we should stop expecting to find ourselves reflected in our country's history and models of power, and write our own story.

-- Jennifer Palmieri, Dear Madam President, p. 128-129

Quote of the Day

Having strong unions doesn't just make things better for union members: if you enjoy affordable health care, an eight-hour workday, and weekends, thank the labor movement in America.

-- Cecile Richards, Make Trouble, p. 60

Quote of the Day

Whatever a women's story might be, it's hard for her to tell it when her voice isn't heard.  It is also hard for her story to be told when people are too busy disliking the sound of her voice to listen to what she is saying.

-- Jennifer Palmieri, Dear Madam President, p. 127

Quote of the Day

Once you start questioning authority, it's hard to stop.

-- Cecile Richards, Make Trouble, p. 49

Quote of the Day

There wasn't anything in our history to compare to Hillary [Clinton].  I guess that's what happens to the people who are making history.  We don't appreciate their value in real time.

-- Jennifer Palmieri, Dear Madam President, p. 127

Quote of the Day

I firmly believe that when half of Congress can get pregnant, we will finally stop arguing about birth control, abortion, and Planned Parenthood -- and we might even fully fund women's health care.

-- Cecile Richards, Make Trouble, p. 17

Quote of the Day

Don't search for your role in his story -- Write your own.

-- Jennifer Palmieri, Dear Madam President, p. 120

Quote of the Day

Sometimes, when someone is making an idiot of themselves, especially on live television, it's just better to let them go ahead.

-- Cecile Richards, Make Trouble, p. 14

Quote of the Day

I think your battle scars can be a comfort to the rest of us.  They will show us what you have endured and tell us what we can survive.  I hope you will let them show.  I do.

-- Jennifer Palmieri, Dear Madam President, p. 110

Quote of the Day

For the first time in my life, I'm wondering whether my own daughters will have fewer rights than I've had.

-- Cecile Richards, Make Trouble, p. xi

Quote of the Day

Show us what you have been through.  It tells us what we can survive.

-- Jennifer Palmieri, Dear Madam President, p. 108

Quote of the Day

The truth is, anything worth doing has its challenges.  And, yes, fighting for what you believe in can be discouraging, defeating, and sometimes downright depressing.  But it can also be powerful, inspiring, fun, and funny -- and it can introduce you to people who will change your life.

-- Cecile Richards, Make Trouble, p. xi

Quote of the Day

We have no idea what beneficial qualities we might be stifling in ourselves as long as we continue to follow an outdated set of behavioral rules that were designed to permit women to play a niche role in a workplace built for men.

-- Jennifer Palmieri, Dear Madam President, p. 80

Quote of the Day

Men spent centuries building the professional world, devising rules to make sure it was a comfortable place for them and that it was geared toward their particular qualities and skills.  Like any good guest, women have looked for clues on how we are to behave in this foreign land.  We have tried to understand and follow the local customs.  We have intuited that in this world we are to be obliging, calm under pressure, and diligent, and to always keep our emotions in check.  Our adaptive skills have served many of us well.  But we aren't in a man's world anymore.  Now it's our world.  And shame on us women if we don't do something to change the way this game is played so that everybody is able to bring their best to the effort.  Let's embrace a new way of working that is equally geared toward our own qualities and skills.

-- Jennifer Palmieri, Dear Madam President, p. 79-80

Quote of the Day

The people in your Oval Office should look like the entire country you represent, not just one ethnicity or gender.  Every decision you make will be better because of it.

-- Jennifer Palmieri, Dear Madam President, p. 71-72

Quote of the Day

On my second go-round serving in the White House, I was a senior staff person.  I ran a department.  When I weighed in, my words weren't just heard but had consequences.  Having a position of power should make you feel more comfortable expressing your view, and yet I found it was harder for me, and I think it was harder for some other women, too.  That's when you have to get over your inhibitions and rise to the challenge to do the job you were hired to do.  You can't think of it as reaching the next rung on the ladder of female empowerment -- it's simply a matter of doing your job.

-- Jennifer Palmieri, Dear Madam President, p. 69-70

Quote of the Day

If you act like you belong in the room, people will believe you do.  If you act like your opinion matters, others will, too.  Simple, true, empowering, and life-changing advice.  It is applicable for all women in every endeavor we undertake.

-- Jennifer Palmieri, Dear Madam President, p. 69

Quote of the Day

People take their cue from you.

-- Evelyn Lieberman

Quote of the Day

In my first meeting with him, President Obama welcomed me, made me feel comfortable, and asked me what I thought.  As my time there went on, I came to appreciate that he didn't ask people what they thought because he wanted to be nice, although he is, or because he wanted the women to feel included, although he did.  He asked people what they thought because he wanted to know what they thought.

-- Jennifer Palmieri, Dear Madam President, p. 66

Quote of the Day

In the Clinton White House, I felt privileged to be allowed "in the room."  I had many generous mentors there, men and women both, who taught me I belonged there and my voice mattered.  I learned to speak up.  It was in the Obama White House where I appreciated that it wasn't just my privilege but my responsibility to speak in whatever room I was in.  You aren't doing your job if you don't.

-- Jennifer Palmieri, Dear Madam President, p. 62

Quote of the Day

None of us here today created this world where biases about women, particularly women in power, persist.  We inherited it.  Most of us -- women and men alike -- are trying to sort it all out.  But there remains something that makes a lot of people uneasy about women trying to move forward ... I hope you draw less fire, but whatever happens, don't let anyone stop you from continuing to move forward.

-- Jennifer Palmieri, Dear Madam President, p. 58

Quote of the Day

A number of women I know and respect think it is a mistake to go back over everything that happened with Hillary in the 2016 campaign.  Their view is that it is self-defeating for women to be seen as complaining about how Hillary was treated.  I might share their view if I hadn't lived that campaign.  We need to understand what happened.  We need to make the path easier for all women working to succeed in whatever role they choose.  The unease we felt toward Hillary could hold any woman back anywhere.

-- Jennifer Palmieri, Dear Madam President, p. 57

Quote of the Day

Is it a coincidence that the first woman nominee of a major party lost a presidential election to a misogynist?

-- Jennifer Palmieri, Dear Madam President, p. 53

Quote of the Day

It felt like we had four men running against (the Hillary Clinton campaign) -- Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Julian Assange, and Jim Comey.  I don't believe it is a coincidence that the first woman nominee of a major party ended up being hounded by four men, all taking actions that would influence the campaign in ways never before seen in our country's history.

-- Jennifer Palmieri, Dear Madam President, p. 51-52

Quote of the Day

TSAHIJDL.  Get to know it.  Whether you are running for president or any woman who challenges the status quo.  "There's something about her I just don't like."  And its sister complaint: "There's something about her I just don't trust."

-- Jennifer Palmieri, Dear Madam President, p. 50

Quote of the Day

Underneath all the questions about wiping servers and deleting emails lay the fundamental truth that what all of this was really about was that there was something about Hillary Clinton folks just didn't trust.  And that something was an intelligent, capable, ambitious woman in a position of power.

-- Jennifer Palmieri, Dear Madam President, p. 50