21st Century Citizenship, March 2020: Recovery

"There is nothing to fear but...fear itself..."
--Franklin D Roosevelt

This has become truly our winter of discontent. With all the political flailing and partisanship, it may seem like we are in a long national nightmare from which we will never awaken. But that need not be the case, if we citizens remember, as our predecessors did in the past, that America is the land of second chances, but not straight lines...

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood..."
--Robert Frost

Loss. Recovery.
2010-19 will be remembered as the lost decade. We can make it the forgotten one in the ten years before us, and we must, because time is running out for the United States as we've known it--and want it to be known... Read More...

http://bit.ly/decade_lost

The Plot Sickens
In the week since our previous post, the Trump Administration continued to cross previously untouched lines, as if determined to permanently change the definition of the term "norm." We have other permanent changes in mind... Read More...

http://bit.ly/plot_sickens

The New Yorker's Jill LePore retraces the last time democracy nearly died around the world, and the paradoxical way in which it was saved and saved itself, with learnings we may be able to apply again today... Learn More...

http://bit.ly/demo_30s

Zeynep Tufeksi of The Atlantic reveals what Xi Jinping apparently could not--how, in its own War Of The Worlds way, Big Data notwithstanding, the coronavirus has exposed authoritarianism's ongoing fatal flaw... Learn More...

http://bit.ly/autho_blind
http://bit.ly/harari_bigd

To get out of a hole, first stop digging. The Atlantic's George Packer chronicles the casually harrowing stories of what will happen if we choose our careers, mortgages, a few extra dollars over our country... Learn More...

http://bit.ly/packer_govt

"The true purpose of education is to produce citizens..."
--Eleanor Roosevelt

Ironically the lost decade was also marked by the longest continuous economic recovery in American history, and that was due, in large part, to two relatively unsung government heroes, neither named Donald J Trump... Learn More... And More...

http://bit.ly/tny_bernanke
http://bit.ly/tny_yellen

The Net is turning more and more losses into recoveries through a growing variety of LAF services. The Internet Lost And Found uses community 'crowdfinding,' Chargerback is B2Bing the travel industry, MissingX has created a worldwide network of property offices, Return.me deploys tags and stickers--can telepathy be far behind in the IoT?

http://bit.ly/net_laf http://bit.ly/charger_back
http://bit.ly/missing_x http://bit.ly/return_me

Nearly 80 years ago, the Saturday Evening Post introduced an organization to the world, AA, that gave recovery new meaning. Today its program is considered a signal contribution to world spiritual practice, while research into the roots of addiction suggests its social context could hold keys to much of what ails us as nation... Learn More...

http://bit.ly/wired_aa
http://bit.ly/addiction_connection