2/23/2023

My Dear Friend & POTUS, JRB,

            How do you feel about secrets? I’m ambivalent. I am inclined to tell the WHOLE truth, which is sometimes not appropriate. I am sometimes oblivious to who is listening & I end up causing unintentional problems.

The few times I have knowingly lied, it has not gone well. I have experienced the challenge of keeping my facts straight, and of course, it’s impossible to develop a lie that accounts for all possibilities, especially when done on the fly. Have you been caught lying?

            I am thinking about this today after reading about the lack of journalists in Burma. Reporters are either in prison or in Thailand. Sonny Swe, founder of independent media outlet Frontier Myanmar, says that people need the TRUTH. He’s worried that the media sector in Myanmar is completely gone, & he has to report second-hand news.

            That got me worried about the media in our country. Mehdi Hasan says the American right has become a “cancel culture brigade” who ban books, prevent the teaching of history & purge the GOP of moderates.

Chris Rufo (CFR) might be the scariest censor of them all. According to the NYT he is going after DEI now. Graeme Wood (GW) writing in The Atlantic lauds CFR for being “one of the most gifted conservative polemicists of his generation… (whose) signature tactic is to draw attention to his enemies at their moments of extreme overreach, often on issues of gender and race.” GW questioned the wisdom of Rufo’s attempt to take over New College, noting, “A wise politician should exercise control over academia sparingly.”

I have an inkling that we might be seeing the Red Scare all over again, but instead of attacking Hollywood, the censors are attacking universities. History shows that CFR will eventually be brought down. Unfortunately, it also shows that he will do a lot of damage before his demise.

Silencing one’s opposition is always tempting, but in the long run, the truth will win out.

BYBS,