Why We're Both Here
(And Where We Need to Go)
I have an advanced degree in Russian History, Revolutions and the efficacy of using Intelligence in achieving state aims. Along my life journey, I have lived and worked in countries ruled by military dictatorships, absolute monarchies, constitutional monarchies, federations, republics, federal parliamentary republics, parliamentary democracies, and a “Jamahiriya,” whatever that was (even its inventor, Muammar Qaddafi, didn’t seem to know). Many of them have been authoritarian states. Almost all of them have restricted rights and freedoms in ways most of us disagree with.
As the world goes through a stage increasingly dominated by authoritarian impulses, it serves all of us to learn how these efforts develop and how they effect us all. We can only do that by staying informed and then deciding what degree of action we will take based on that. For me, part of that includes writing these posts. To quote the dystopian author Aldous Huxley, "Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they'll go through anything." Margaret Atwood agrees: "A word after a word after a word is power."
You and I — the reader and the writer — are here for the same reasons. If "A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave," (Richard Wright) “A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it." (Samuel Johnson)
“The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands. It would serve us well today to understand why.”
― Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
Together, we can create a finish that we will be proud to pass on to our children. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. Let’s write our story of freedom together.