In the 1980s, the British government had a department whose mission was to write objective nonpartisan descriptions of government practices and rules. Thatcher turned it into an advertising agency.

*Republicans want working-class voters — without actually supporting workers.*

Xi has imposed total repression, strict even by comparison to the CCP of ten years ago. The only way one can criticize the government is by writing in a public toilet.

The author left China in 2009, and says that the straitjacket of repression in China today makes the country unrecognizable to her now.

*Xi Jinping's party purge prompts fears of greater Taiwan invasion risk.*

The ACLU asked the Supreme Court to rule that laws prohibiting specific kinds of boycotts are unconstitutional, after one federal appeals court ruled to the contrary.

The authoritarian campaign to prohibit boycotting Israel has put the US in danger of broad-spectrum plutocratist authoritarianism.

Alan Singer: *Understanding History in the "Age of the Big Lie."*

Singer refers to E.H. Carr, who claimed that "Concern with the future is what really motivates the study of the past. I disagree, because I agree with Singer's concluding paragraph: there are many possible motivations and purposes in studying history.

In particular, it can be interesting to study history seeking the causes and explanations of the present, but we need to avoid transferring our present-day thinking and moral ideas anachronistically to people of the past.