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‘America Is a Republic, Not a Democracy’ Is a Dangerous—And Wrong—Argument Senator Mike Lee of Utah have taken to reminding the public that “we’re not a democracy.” It is quaint that so many Republicans, embracing a president who routinely tramples constitutional norms, have suddenly found their voice in pointing out that, formally, the country is a republic. There is some truth to this insistence. But it is mostly disingenuous. The Constitution was meant to foster a complex form of majority rule, not enable minority rule.

The founding generation was deeply skeptical of what it called “pure” democracy and defended the American experiment as “wholly republican.” To take this as a rejection of democracy misses how the idea of government by the people, including both a democracy and a republic, was understood when the Constitution was drafted and ratified. It misses, too, how we understand the idea of democracy today.

The ‘false positives’ scandal that felled Colombia’s military hero

When the Colombian army defeated the Farc guerrillas, ending decades of conflict, General Mario Montoya was hailed a national hero. But then it was revealed that thousands of ‘insurgents’ executed by the army were in fact innocent men

Newspaper front pages around U.S. mark Biden, Harris win in history

A front page for history: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris celebrated a long-fought victory on Saturday night. In his first speech to the nation as president-elect, Biden promised change and healing.

'They created a false image': how the Reagans fooled America

A new docuseries studies the damaging reign of Ronald and Nancy Reagan and the insidious myth-making that still surrounds their legacy.

The Reagans, a new four-part documentary airing on Showtime, pinpoints this flair for PR as the genesis of Ronald Reagan’s swift rise in government and the secret to his administration’s sweeping popularity within the Republican party. The 40th commander-in-chief and his first lady, Nancy Reagan, exercised a then-unprecedented degree of control over how they were seen, and for it, they were anointed as the new saviors of the rightwing way of life during their stint in the White House during the ‘80s. “More than any modern president, the myth-making around Ronald and Nancy Reagan has been extensive and effective,” series director Matt Tyrnauer tells the Guardian from his home in Los Angeles. “They created a false image that doesn’t conform with reality, one that is only now being fully examined.”

NY Times Article CORRUPTION ANGER CHAOS INCOMPETENCE LIES DECAY Donald Trump’s re-election campaign poses the greatest threat to American democracy since World War II. Mr. Trump’s ruinous tenure already has gravely damaged the United States at home and around the world. He has abused the power of his office and denied the legitimacy of his political opponents, shattering the norms that have bound the nation together for generations. He has subsumed the public interest to the profitability of his business and political interests. He has shown a breathtaking disregard for the lives and liberties of Americans. He is a man unworthy of the office he holds.	TIME article by Charlotte Alter October, 2020 How a Road Trip Through America's Battlegrounds Revealed a Nation Plagued by Misinformation But there was a darker strain. For every two people who offered a rational and informed reason for why they were supporting Biden or Trump, there was another–almost always a Trump supporter–who offered an explanation divorced from reality. You could call this persistent style of untethered reasoning “unlogic.” Unlogic is not ignorance or stupidity; it is reason distorted by suspicion and misinformation, an Orwellian state of mind that arranges itself around convenient fictions rather than established facts.	THE GUARDIAN by Emily Holden, Jimmy Tobias and Alvin Chang Mon 26 Oct 2020 Revealed: the full extent of Trump's 'meat cleaver' assault on US wilderness While the US government is supposed to be an impartial arbiter of how public lands should be used, Trump has stacked the administration with former fossil-fuel lobbyists and conservative activists. Often, the department sells access to these lands at rock bottom prices and in places that are sacred to tribal communities, important to imperiled animals, and critical to prevent runaway climate change.
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Tom Philpott	Legislators demand resignations after GAO finds DHS leaders were unlawfully appointed to positions	The Most Awesome Climate Solutions that No One is Talking About.
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