Fighting For Democracy
This video, made by historian Heather Cox Richardson a few hours after Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony on Tuesday before the House Select Committee investigating January 6, is worth viewing (at least by concerned Americans) in its entirety.
The video should start playing a little after the 36-minute point. At this point, having summarized and interpreted Hutchinson's testimony, and having added a few comments on the SCOTUS Dobbs decision, and then offering some historical clarification on how democracies die, Richarson adds comments about some of the things she thinks American citizens will have to do to preserve democracy.
Since her thinking begins to get at the problems I have tried to address with my #seizethemeansofcommunity hashtag on Mastodon I thought I'd provide a link that started you at that point.
Some notes:
- She seems to be unaware of efforts like Mastodon, Hubzilla, Pleroma and other open source, self-hostable Fediverse options available so, to the extent that she addresses online responses, she tends to assume that people will have to avail themselves of platforms like Facebook and Twitter (and their ilk).
- The link below is to a YouTube video, accessed through an instance of Invidious to minimize tracking. The YouTube video is a repost, I believe, to a Facebook video in a group she maintains, an indication IMO of a certain lack of awareness on her part about all the forces that are hacking away at democracy.
- Richardson's comments do touch on what I consider to be an important point: how our elevation of heroes tends to come at the expense of our understanding of the important parts communities of people have played in social, political and cultural progress over the last century.
History & Politics Chat: June 28, 2022
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