If the last four years - and four weeks in particular - should have taught us anything, it’s this. The past is not another country. Even other countries aren’t other countries. All it takes to slide into the fetid, vicous darkness of totalitarianism is not paying attention. https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1336061023200153600

We think we’re so big, so grand, and so civilized that it can’t possibly happen here. It can. There is a furious human underbelly that can always be weaponized by an angry narcissist. Homo Sapiens has been around for maybe 200,000 years. Nazi Germany isn’t even a heartbeat ago.

Every time we compare the current situation to a “banana republic” it’s both kinda racist and also pretends that white folks aren’t capable of, for example, exterminating six million Jewish people. Your grandfather was alive when that happened. It really isn’t that long ago.

The fact we have iPhones and computers and YouTubers changes nothing. We’re still those same animals. Prey to the same impulses and fears. Susceptible to the same influences. The upside of this is that human goodness also remains constant. Celebrate and reinforce that, and FIGHT.

Bear in mind that the architects, craftspeople and slaves who built the pyramids would think as well as you. And you probably can’t paint as well as the people who did the caves in Lascaux, 17,000 years ago. We’re will learning. And learners keep making the same mistakes.

The internet will not save us. It only enables us to globally make the same mistakes at the same time - if we’re not careful, mindful and diligent. A group mind only works if part of it is saying “That’s a terrible idea. The world will suck if we do that”. Keep being that part.