These are days to love the world enough to understand what we are up against. These are days to take your children to marches. To teach history with protest signs. To give young persons a voice that is their own-- a voice they trust against conspiracy and cynicism.
These are days to explain why black lives matter. To articulate the backlash against black lives matter as a fear of accountability. Because it is. Because the white majority is so afraid of losing its privilege that many have voted to eviscerate freedom instead.
These are difficult, heartbreaking days that demand perseverance and self-education. It is time for Americans to learn what this country was founded against. It is time to acknowledge the demons in our closet-- the ugly parts we let out in this election.
For the ugly parts of America own us now. #notinmyname is no longer enough.
Here are 100 free articles and essays that shed light on the present. Fellow homeschoolers, we have a special responsibility given the complicity of Homeschoolers Defense League and similar organizations. If you have limited toilet-reading time, here's a key:
* must-reads ** inspirations & hope *** the evil we must resist
- Reinhold Niebuhr, "Pawns for Fascism" (circa 1937)
- George Saunders, "Who Are All These Trump Supporters?" (The New Yorker)*
- Tony Judt, "Ill Fares the Land" (New York Review of Books)
- Hannah Arendt, "Dream and Nightmare: Anti-American Feeling in Europe" (Common-weal)
- Masha Gessen, "Trump: The Choice We Face" (NYRB Daily)
- Umberto Eco, "Ur-fascism" (New York Review of Books)
- Marco Roth, "Caucasian Nation" (n+1)*
- Kieryn Darkwater, "I was trained for the culture wars in homeschool, awaiting someone like Mike Pence as a Messiah" (Autostraddle) *
- I.F. Stone, "The Rich March on Washington All the Time" (I.F. Stone's Weekly)
- Stephen E. Hanson, "Picking Up the Pieces" (Los Angeles Review of Books)
- James Palmer, "How can a first-person shooter have a victim complex?" (Aeon)*
- John Mueller, "Bands of Brigands" (Lapham's Quarterly)
- Suzanne Moore, "Why did women vote for Trump? Because misogyny is not a male-only attribute"' (The Guardian)*
- Andrea Pitzer, "Enemy Aliens" (Lapham,s Quarterly)
- Mark Lilla, "Arendt and Eichmann: The New Truth" (New York Review of Books)
- Marian Wilde, "The bully and the bystander" (Great Schools)
- I. F. Stone, "Washington After Stalin" (I.F. Stone's Weekly)
- Tony Judt, "The Problem of Evil in Postwar Europe" (New York Review of Books)
- Jeff Sharlet, "Hell House" (Lapham's Quarterly)
- Ta-Nahesi Coates,"The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration" (The Atlantic)
- Livia Gershon, "Bring Back Women's Lib" (Aeon)
- David Helvarg, "Defending the Earth from Donald Trump" (Progressive)***
- Dan P. McAdams, "The Mind of Donald Trump" (The Atlantic)
- Mark Greif, "Over My Dead Body: Political theology of the GOP" (n+1)
- Matt Taibbi, "The Fury and Failure of Donald Trump" (Rolling Stone)
- Gabor Hamai, "Towards An Illiberal Democracy" (Osteuropa)
- Richard B. Spencer, "Long Live the Emperor!" (Radix Journal)***
- Kristin Dombek, "The Two Cultures of Life" (n+1)
- Sara Lazarovic, "An Artist Went to the Women's March and Sketched What She Saw" (Yes! Magazine)**
- Molly Ball, "President Trump's Perpetual Campaign" (The Atlantic)
- Fred Banson, "The Priest in the Trees"(Harper's) **
- Char Adams, "What every white woman attending the Women's March needs to know" (Bustle)
- Dan Mistich, "Lee Bains Talks Trump, Resistance, and the Southern Thing" (Flagpole)**
- Williesha Morris, "I'm pro-life, Christian, and I support Planned Parenthood" (Huffington Post)
- Zaid Jilani, "What the Santa Classification of Martin Luther King Jr. Leaves Out" (The Intercept)*
- Bradley Burston, "He's a monster. And now he's President of the United States" (Ha'aretz)
- Martin Luther King Jr., "Beyond Vietnam" (4 April 1967)***
- Masha Gessen, "Autocracy: Rules for Survival" (NYRB Daily)
- E.J. Dionne, Jr., "The Ominous Inauguration" (Commonweal)
- Bill Moyers, "Donald Trump's Demolition Derby" (Truthdig)
- Rachel Shabi, "Wrong Side of the Fence" (Aeon)
- Brian Whitmore, "Moscow's Balkan Mischief" podcast (Radio Free / Radio Liberty)
- Bobby Azarian, "How fear of death makes people more right-wing" (Aeon) ***
- Stephen Piggott, "Jeff Sessions: Champion of Anti-Muslim and Anti-Immigrant Extremists" (Southern Poverty Law Center)
- "Darweesh v. Trump" (ACLU)
- Jim Wallis, "Resistance is Patriotic-- and Christian" (Sojourner's)
- Mostaffa Hasoun, "I Went Through America's Extreme Vetting" (Politico)
- Juan Cole, "Torture produces fake news: That's how we got into Iraq" (Truthdig)
- Jennifer Berkshire, "The Long Game of Betsy DeVos" (The Progressive)
- Michael Lovelock, "The Makeover Trap" (Aeon)
- Julianne Ross, "The 8 Biggest Lies Men's Rights Activists Spread About Women" (Mic)
- Adam Piore, "Why We're Patriotic" (Nautilus)
- Claire Landsbaum, "Men's Rights Activists Are Flocking to the Alt-Right" (NY Mag)***
- B. A. Brown, "Illiberalism Rising" (The Hedgehog Review)
- Robert Westbrook, "Virtuous Reality" (The Baffler)
- James Macauley, "Shadow and Substance" (Aeon)
As for action, here are ten ways to make a difference right now. To commit your life, time, family, and heart to a better America.
- Comment on the DAPL.
- Plan a data rescue event (especially great for homeschoolers).
- Since public oversight is being gutted and dismantled under the new cronyism system, citizenship demands more of us. Use your blog as a platform to make FOIA requests about your local Republican leaders. Here's how.
- Call your congressman every single day to protest the cabinet appointments.
- Join a local Pantsuit Nation or Nasty Women group. Believe me, there are many wonderful "nasty children" as well. And bad hombres abound.
- Support the NAACP. Today. Now.
- Watch SNL. Watch Aziz Anzari. Watch Trevor Noah. Support stand-up. Support satire. Laugh and cry. Then wake up and keep fighting. Your Trumptivist friends will never have the decency to thank you. But who cares? This isn't about you. This is about AMERICA.
