EP6A | Timothy Snyder's "On Tyranny" - The Big Picture

Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century offers important reflections on the fragility of democratic systems and the rising momentum toward authoritarianism in contemporary politics.  Most importantly, it offers citizen tools aimed at fortifying vulnerabilities characteristically targeted by autocrats, dictators, despots, and tyrants, each of whom aim at consolidating power for their own ends.

This week, we look at the broader socio-political journey of the first of Snyder's lessons, specifically related to vigilance, the belief in truth, the value of the media, language, ethics, and the defense of institutions.

Resources Mentioned in this Episode: 
Snyder, Timothy. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century Timothy Snyder. Thorndike Press, 2021.

“United States (Ranked 19th).” Legatum Prosperity Index 2023, 27 Feb. 2023, www.prosperity.com/globe/united-states.

Interview Clips Used

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Disclaimer:   The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speaker’s own and do not represent the views, thoughts, and opinions of sponsors, underwriters, advertisers or guests. The material and information presented here is for general information purposes only. 

Transcript

Episode 6A: “Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny, the Big Picture"

Welcome to American Musecast!  Thanks so much for joining me!  I’m your host, Susan Travis, exploring American politics using the construct of the hero’s journey and the archetypes of the psyche.  

By now, we have established a bit of foundation for engaging the kind of dynamic citizenry needed to protect American democracy.  We’re learning how the history of our nation has been a hero’s journey all along, and how the hero is not only the country, and our forefathers, but that WE are also the heroes, you, and me.  We’re seeing how our journey can be just as much about rising to the tests and occasions before us, as it is about failing those tests.  We’ve also seen how the quest is about defeating injustices and defending the best of what dwells within our country, our history, and within our own lives.  We are the heroes and villains of our own story, and the human experience is always to champion the one, and defeat the other.  I’m particularly fond of that old native tale of the two wolves within each of us, one gracious and heroic, and the other despairing, stingy, and malicious.  “Which one wins?” the little boy asks his grandfather.  “The one you feed,” answers Grandfather.

So. That explains a lot about how we got where we are, and how we should move forward.  We starve out our lesser angels of bigotry and injustice by feeding the emotional intelligence of our populace, by feeding our creativity and compassion, and by strengthening our understanding of democratic structure and principles. It’s by feeding the positive elements of the American psyche, that we grow our resilience!  

Today, we’re going to look more deeply at strengthening the backbone of our hero populace and building the muscle of a dynamic citizenry in defense of democracy.  Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century offers important reflections on the fragility of democratic systems and the rising momentum toward authoritarianism in contemporary politics.  Most importantly, it offers citizen tools aimed at fortifying vulnerabilities characteristically targeted by autocrats, dictators, despots, and tyrants, each of whom aim at consolidating power for their own ends. 

Now, one defining characteristic of liberalism is to lean into tolerance and acceptance, and even celebration of differences and diversity of people and ideas, stopping short at the boundary of tolerating injustice.  That’s the place at which decent people become, well, “intolerant.” In 1945, Karl Popper noted that a tolerant society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.  So, we often bump against that age old paradox about “tolerating intolerance.”  It's something we just can’t do.  Think of it as being open to all but the lesser angels, or as starving out the bad wolf.

Ever watchful for hypocrisy, as we all are, conservatives regularly note, “liberals tolerate everything except people who don’t agree with them.”  Well, no, let’s be specific, it’s not at all “people who don’t agree with them.”  It’s the “hate and injustice,” the lesser angels, to which liberals object, and weirder still that these elements are not universally seen as social pathogens - diseases.  And, I might add, party affiliation doesn’t determine our instincts for hate, fear, and injustice; though those elements are inclined to gravitate away from liberalism.  The wolf of hate and fear is fed with regularity, and for many people, championing the protection of their intolerance is at the top of their agenda.

“Let’s all just stay civil and agree to disagree!” We’ve all heard that. It sounds sweet, like Miss Mary’s Sunday Manners, and maybe it works when the argument is about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but I saw a recent meme which puts this in perspective, showing a frail naked woman being pushed into a gas chamber by an arm with a swastika-ed sleeve.  THAT’s why resisting needs to involve more than just “disagreeing,” and why we must not tolerate this insidious notion of agreeing to disagree at all costs. . . as . . . what?  As we spread someone’s legs for a gender inspection, as we push someone along on the Trail of Tears, as we show them into their cage for wanting a better life, as we lift our eyes to space junk and pull plastic from the throats of dead whales?  Shall we just agree, to disagree as we grieve someone dying in a parking lot miscarriage because the doctors inside were afraid of life in prison, as we sleepwalk into a realm of lies and a democracy stolen, or as we yawn through another mass shooting?  Shall we just be nice and civil, and feed the worst of our angels until we choke? Or can there be a higher ground from which, right up front, we refuse to tolerate hate and indignity? 

Don’t get me wrong, agreeing to disagree has its place, but such agreement requires the ability to discern areas of responsible disagreement from areas outside of the realm of tolerance. Human decency, love and compassion, emotional maturity, peace, freedom, and justice dwell on higher ground, and it’s all within the reach of anyone’s choice, because human decency can no more tolerate the low ground of lesser angels than darkness can survive light. 

Tyranny.  It’s is a cruel, harsh, and unfair governmental system in which a person or small group of people have power over everyone else.  It extinguishes elections, and takes glee in tormenting and eliminating those in opposition.  It’s the government of the bully.  It says, we will put you in your place and keep you there, and you will not have a choice.  It punishes, and it’s harsh and unyielding, and it may sound like a good idea to some of you, but it’s decidedly, NOT.  

We’re often in a mixed state of understanding about what we’re up against.  The movie, Don’t Look Up! was a marvelous parody of contemporary times.  Alarmists versus the unconcerned.  That’s us, still protecting the idea that this is the ordinary world, and indeed, our young people born after 9-11 do see this as the ordinary world, never having experienced gentler times.  And so, complacency and a lack of awareness about the subtle erosions of democratic norms rest like a haze in our lowest valleys.  We have the unawareness of the poor little frog in the pot, who won’t realize until it’s too late that his little sauna steadily rises toward a deathly boil.  

VIGILANCE, ALERTNESS & RECOGNITION

Recognizing the temperature of the times is one of those steps we know about, though some of us are better than others at recognizing red flags.  When we don’t understand red flags, we view them as premonition. “She saw it coming.  He always knew this would happen.  They warned us, years ago.” We’ve heard that before, tales of the disregarded warnings made by those sensitive to social and political trends.  Well, Timothy Snyder offers some lessons that speak to our awareness and recognition of encroaching tyranny.  

Vigilance, it’s that alertness aimed at identifying threats before they strike.  In recent years, liberals have co-opted the term, ”woke” to newly characterize positive attributes, a meaning that it never actually held.  Best of intentions, but an appropriation nonetheless.  Of course, conservatives believe “woke,” means, all things liberal and horrible, and so, they’ve created another new definition that even more fully misses the mark of the original term. 

In actual fact, since the earliest days of the civil rights movement, being “woke,” referred to a hyper-alertness regarding places and practices of racial injustice.  It meant using vigilance as a first defense against threats to survival.  “Stay woke.”  Stay alert for danger.  Be the lighthouse for others.  Nothing ugly about that, unless you’re the one lulling people into false sense of security.  That’s the incentive to spit in the face of “wokeness.”  

Authoritarianism and tyranny dig in their claws when they find a willing society rich with anticipatory obedience, so, it’s easy then to begin with Snyder’s first lesson, "Do not obey in advance," which asks us to look up, and not sleepwalk our way through a slow-moving normalization of authoritarian practices. That anticipatory obedience is a catalyst for a repressive government.  Tyranny creeps in gradually, often disguised as temporary measures adopted as “necessary” during crises.  The sauna of the frog.  Our challenge at this stage is to confront our own complacency and snap to the reality that our freedoms and rights are not guaranteed. Recognizing this gets us off our duff, and moves us toward embarking on the hero’s journey of resistance. The crossing of the threshold is a decisive moment testing the hero’s resolve required to stand against oppressive forces.  It’s an essential commitment that transforms passive observers into active participants in the fight for justice. 

So when Snyder asks us not to obey in advance, this means refusing to ‘agree to disagree,’ and turn a blind eye to injustice.  Similarly, should we agree to abandon vigilance, we obey in advance.  So, stay woke, and stay strong in that woke-ness.

We teach people how to treat us, and part of that means being as courageous as we can manage.  Let’s not just bring our lunch money to the bully. Let’s not hit our knees and cower before the bully speaks. Let’s not teach our leaders that we can be lulled, sedated by our televisions and toys into accepting the corruption of leaders who lie and who disrespect our hallowed halls and our trust.  Let’s phone them. Tell them. Scold them.  Teach them how to treat us, by demonstrating and insisting on respect, dignity, and healthy boundaries.  Tell them, “You’re my proxy, my representative, and I won’t allow you to represent me in this way.  You’ll be voted out.”  This is not about the ugly adolescent behavior of “teaching them a lesson,” by mailing death threats and posturing intimidation.  Let’s get that out of our heads! This is about demonstrating what it means to hold high ground, and to be guided by the maturity and discipline of our better angels.  We all have a threshold of courage, but if none are prepared to die for freedom, it’ll wither.  Freedom will perish . . . because until all are free, we’re all at risk.  We MUST protect others as we’d have them protect us, otherwise, the poem, FIRST THEY CAME, by Martin Niemöller. comes true.

First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me, and there was no one left, to speak out for me.

Perhaps the most famous experiments on obedience were conducted by Stanley Milgram in the 60s.  Participants were told by an experimenter to administer increasingly powerful electric shocks to another individual. Unbeknownst to the participants, shocks were fake and the individual being shocked was an actor. The majority of participants obeyed, even when the individual being shocked screamed in agony.  Stanley Milgrim’s experiment demonstrated how perfectly decent people would continue to administer the shocks, when told, “It’s okay, you’re authorized to continue; it’s a necessary part of the experiment.” The lesson?  We need our own principles, and we need stand by them, guarding their boundaries.  We can’t just follow the ugliest paths and agree to turning a blind eye.  We need to stay woke and courageous.  Be willing to stand out. Understand the boundaries of the high ground, and don’t yield it, don’t surrender democracy even incrementally. 

Timothy Snyder understands that it’s going to take ALL of us to overcome our apathy in order to confront the challenges ahead.  Crossing that threshold into actually doing the work to defend democracy means that we can’t just have it our own way.  Now, there’s a temptation to get everything “just so” and to keep it our own way.  I picture an ocean that shifts and sloshes, but MUST NOT all slide to one side. That’s not good!  Hence, Snyder urges us to "Beware the one-party state," because there are dangers inherent to the erosion of pluralism, the diversity that is, of a society.  Consider a chorus.  Different voices, lifted in the harmony of a shared goal, in this case a democracy – equal respect for what each brings to the chorus.  Now consider a chorus lifted in disrespect, contempt for fellows, trying to outshout others, with the only goal of establishing only one way of singing deliberately out of tune with the goal.  Tyranny wants only one way, and it suppresses all voices except its own, which means suppressing freedom.  So, beware, the one-party state.  

To this point, we’ll talk next week about Project 2025, that manifesto, that blueprint 900-page manual aimed at solidifying power for an extreme right agenda.  It’s a doozie.

Now, it may seem that tyranny would put some deplorable opposition “in their place,” so that our own “way” becomes fixed and established, but it’s not that simple.  It may start that way, but tyranny isn’t about ideology; it’s about concentrated power.  Those who install tyranny, become its victims as much as any opposition, because tyrants and autocrats aren’t keen on sharing.  You may remember those extremes which were discussed in the last episode:  communism at the liberal left end of the spectrum, and right-wing fascism on the conservative end of the spectrum.  It’s those extremist wings on either end, which snuff out all else to concentrate power for the tyrant, which then snuffs out everything BUT that power.  

This is why we strive for bi-partisanship and a middle class, so that power is balanced at the middle.  This is why all-or-nothing cannot be our goal.  This is why we need the strength of diversity, diversity of race, of gender, and yes, the diversity of political ideology.  Now, multi-party systems are even better at preventing rival suppression, because they discourage the weaponization of openness to undo or remake with every power shift.  The weight is more evenly distributed so that the system stays in balance. We’re strengthened by a diversity of views and disagreements, because that diversity helps build our understanding of other’s needs, of the complexities of decisions and their impact, and that same diversity weakens and dissipates threats from within.    

Now, fair enough, many Americans DO have a vision that they’d like to see perpetuated – the green party wants green and progressives want progress and libertarians want liberty and white supremacists want white supremacy.  We all have a vision of a better world, which excludes what we see as a “worse” world.  But we need that balancing tension of other agendas to discipline our appetites to go hog wild in the candy store of our choice.  We’re tempted, lured toward our ambitious goals, but an over-abundance of our own desires can overpower what OTHER people want and need –  our task is to diversify abundance so that the rising tide lifts all boats, not just ours.  It pulls us to the center, toward balance, and whether we like being pulled from our dearest hopes and dreams, none of us should hog it all, hoarding power and abundance.  Such tyranny flies in the face of a healthy democracy, because “sharing,”  respecting the will of others, is built into the very bones of democracy. 

Another component of our vigilance is to not let the media disappear.  The media is imperfect reflection of our collective psyche.  It’s an imperfect mentor, ever recording, ever reflecting, ever archiving.  Former president Trump whipped up a frenzy of negativity to the press, not with clear-eyed analysis, but generally, systematically undermining of the very idea of a free press, which is CRITICAL to democracy. We need the media to be held accountable, but a wholesale screeching that they are all fake and should be jailed is not accountability, it’s abuse.  Pooh poohing factchecking and evidence-based research is immature at best, devious and ignorant at worst.  

Instead, collectively, the media, as a generally for-profit culture, depends on consumers for their riches, even as we depend on their integrity.  So, we must insist upon media integrity in exchange for our consumption.  Lie to us, for profit, as Fox News confessed to doing about the “stolen election” in 2022, and their $780 million settlement will be chump change on the way to bankruptcy.  Trust, but verify with investigative checks and balances.  Authoritarians abhor investigation, and will call it fake at every step, even as they gin out propaganda like spun sugar.  

One of our biggest problems occurs when trust has an unhealthy agenda that is untethered to truth.  Then we get advertisers and consumers eager for junk food, junk news.  It’s the high fructose corn syrup, the instant gratification and sugar high fueling, feeding the bad wolves of our nature.  “Down with fact-checking.”  It’s where $780 million is a small price to pay for the kind of crack that justifies indulging our worst instincts.

Responsible professional journalism invests a lot of money into rigorous fact checking and research, because high standards of excellence are necessary to merit trust.  They rely on trust by responsible readers, listeners and viewers, because we are at the other end of the message.  We are part of that dynamic, participants, not just observers, or worse, lemmings, those little followers like pine processionary ants. “What IS truth, anyway, who can know?”  Well, that’s a cop-out.  We all hear that sort of hipster cynicism as a pretentious sidestep to avoid doing the work.  Sorry.  Our job is to investigate, because each individually provable fact builds evidence, and evidence builds a society made of common trusted knowledge.  

So, let’s toughen up!  We can hear hard truths, and we must.  We’ve taken to indulging a desire for shorter shallower articles, and longer headlines so we don’t have to read the articles, but long substantive articles dig beneath the surface.  They hold the nuance, the juicy words, the details, and the interesting plot twists.  We need to read them.  We’re not children – we’re adults who need to challenge our brains not only for democracy, but for our health.  

So believe in that there is truth. In his tenth lesson, “Believe in truth,” Snyder highlights the necessity of discernment and the pursuit of truth in a world rife with misinformation. Just as heroes return from their journeys with newfound knowledge, those who resist authoritarianism become beacons of hope, inspiring others to join the fight. Don’t just accept whatever you’re told – look into it, and let’s look before we share.  Insisting on truth is like an intellectual condom.  Don’t spread crap and infect the populace!  

That whole, “IF this utterly ridiculous speculation true, then, oh, my” should be denounced as the tactic of scoundrels that it is.  For crying out loud, find out if it’s true. Be curious. Get out your monocles and magnifying glasses, your spyglasses and thinking caps and investigate. We MUST do OUR research, not as some snarky comeback to buttress our own ignorance, but as an act of integrity before spreading speculation and assumptions.  We’re not hunting snipes in the Underworld – we’re looking for evidence, that tried-and-true method of inquiry we seem to have let get rusty from disuse. Trust, but verify.  

Because without truth there’s no freedom, no basis to criticize power; we MUST differentiate between what we want to hear and what is true; because fascism just adores repetitive sound bites and slogans; it loves an appeal to emotion that circumvents reason.  

There’s a power and energy in our storied characters that speaks to the dynamics of humanity whether its tooth fairies, Santa, God, the Devil, or the Green Man.  (I know, some of you hate that I lumped them together, but hear me out.)  We learn about our humanity, about grace, and respect, about generosity through our storied characters.  But our narratives need to carry the heft of the things we’re talking about here.  About our transactions with the trolls under the bridge.  About our misplaced trust in the apples of the serpent and the witch.  About how Shrek and little Dorothy and Judas and Brutus can be deceived into losing faith in the hero’s journey.  Believe in those truths that speak to our humanity.  And believe in empirical evidence and scientific inquiry.  We know how to do this. 

Truth and freedom are synonymous, but there are four means of killing truth 1.  Hostility toward reality through flourishing lies, that’s when the narrative doesn’t serve and the lies do;   2.  Simplistic repetition of sound bites which cover up the fuller story; 3. Magical thinking and abandonment of reason, the land of conspiracy theories and speculation;  4. Misplacing faith and deification of leader.  And what are we seeing?  A demonization of journalistic ethics in favor the mess we have now.   So. Cherish the truth; read deeply; use reason, and have faith in a professional press.  The free press, as an institution, is critical to our democracy. Defend it. Require truth and evidence.

INSTITUTIONAL DEFENSE, VALUE OUR VALUES

"Defend institutions."  Too many citizens don’t really know what an institution is.  I know, because I ask people, and they can’t name one.  Well, institutions are those frameworks that uphold democracy, such as the judiciary, the press, and education.  Yes, they are broken and bleeding, and while they are far from perfect, reflecting our own complexities, we’ve developed an unhealthy habit of easily disparaging them, characterizing all news as fake, all judges corrupt, all education as failing . . . and we need to stop that shit, because it undermines their importance.  Where there are problems, we need to step into the responsibility of reforming and preserving our institutions, step into the role of actively participating in their stewardship.  Not just in spirit. But with our arms and legs, at least part of our spare time, and some of our money.  Even in their dysfunction, love them anyway, and defend their importance!  

Like our friends and loved ones, we need to love and cherish and value what our institutions bring to democracy.  Love and value that we have an education system, so defend the benefits. Defend it.  We value and cherish education because X. . . don’t forget the X.  And, by God, there’s a reason for the free press.  Defend it.  WE value our institutions because of so many reasons and we must regain our trust because of those reasons.  Don’t forget the reasons underpinning our values.  Love those values – they are not suggestions.  Part of our defense is a determination to steward, repair and reform to separate chaff from grain and to excise metastasizing threads.  Not education sucks. Press sucks, military sucks.  Fix what is broken in our treasures, don’t trash them.

NO.  We need to be specific in our language and precise in our words – impeccable in our word.  We must be kind to our language.  We need to READ and say things differently so that we hear the tweeded texture and richness of new ideas and ways of seeing our world and our ways. READ so that we don’t just burp up the party line, but rephrase so that we can hear the depth beneath the sound bites.  READ so that we find other metaphors and lively rhetoric . . . READ to find meaning in poems and rich presentation that deepens our understanding. 

We grow as we differentiate ourselves, giving our own take.  Reading creates empathy and broadens horizons and entertains diversity of thought and perspective.  We know that terms can unite or divide, and that too much tv is a collective trance that dulls perspective.  We can do better than surrender to these addictions. 

Let’s learn new words, and above all, listen for dangerous words – words coming from ourselves as much as from others.  In Rwanda, Hutu talk radio hosts began to call the Tutsi, “cockroaches.”  It dehumanized them into a pestilence, until the day came when a call to exterminate the cockroaches was answered by the Hutu machete massacre of their neighbors, for four months, in 1994.  Cockroach.  It’s just a word.  Just a little icky bug.  But it’s a powerful metaphor, a powerful symbol.  Because we, too, are hearing it applied to our American neighbors. I heard a far- left talk show host call Republicans “cockroaches,” one day, years ago.  I sent him a scathing email about Rwanda.  But, it’s common fringe rhetoric, and an insidiously bad habit, this dehumanization of others.  So listen for how words are used.  Simple words used symbolically to express hate and revulsion.  

Symbols inspire, and the actions we take are steps into the future.  When we are impeccable in our word, we can ensure that our symbols are inclusive, not exclusive, and that we are not furthering those tendencies that allow tyranny to fester and flourish.  

I’ve talked before, about the problems that can come from uninformed unprecise grousing and whinging.  It’s important to learn about issues we don’t understand rather than just winging it.  Journalistic ethics aren’t applied to fringe news, nor will such outlets explore anything related to an alternative perspective.  It’s on the fringe because it’s unstable, imbalanced, and unreliable, and for those reasons, unworthy of our attention.

Our vulnerabilities increase as we abandon deeper understandings of institutions, of values, of our democracy.  The problem is, in part, a superficially educated populace. That is SAD and it is dangerous, but we aren’t idiots.  Even from a foggy education, we can choose differently.  We let this happen, and we MUST establish a plan for moving forward, not only with our children, but for the rest of us as well.  Our defense needs to come from every front we can find.  So, follow the money.  Who benefits from a superficially educated citizenry?  Who regularly maligns and undermines our democracy?  Where do simplistic explanations thrive?  Who decries our beautiful diversified portfolio of perspectives?  Let’s start there, be sure it’s not us, and choose to defend our institutions with our words and our reason.

Part of that defense includes “taking responsibility for the face of the world,” because Snyder urges individuals to hold themselves accountable for the actions of their governments.  We sit passively far too often.  As we confront the realities of our nation’s struggle, we may undergo a profound change, deepening our understanding of what it means to be a citizen in a democracy. This transformation fuels our commitment to engage further and to inspire others to join the fight.  But when we sit passively, complacently, the face of the world grows uglier and uglier because we take no responsibility; that is what is meant by “be the change you want to see in the world.”  It’s not up to someone else.  It’s up to me.  And you.

The symbols of today are the reality of tomorrow. Call out hate, don’t just accept it in the world.  If hate has a platform, a sign in the window, hateful jokes and comments, then let’s be the counter balance.   We teach people how to treat us, and we teach the world those same boundaries when instead of just condemning, we say “here’s why I don’t do that.”  

Defend the judiciary. This doesn’t mean packing the courts with officers of the court who are partisan.  We’re always trying to find more to the left, more to the right, but how about packing the court with those who follow the rule of law without a partisan agenda.  We need nine at the center; nine who interpret the law without fault or favor.  We need courts, at the center, because political bias is just as harmful as racial or gender bias.  We don’t need the precarious balance of a teeter totter; we need to rest comfortably knowing that there will be neither teeter nor totter, regardless of who comes and goes from our courts.  We need to insist on this, but the problem is, too many of us don’t believe it.  So, our courage needs nurturing, and our moral compass needs recalibrating.  

Remember and insist upon professional ethics.  Authoritarians can’t flourish without corrupt professionals.  Collectively, professionals defy authoritarians through strong ethical principles, professional standards, and common interests, all of which requires trust and the experience of vigilance and critical thinking.  

As we recognize the signs of tyranny, embrace our roles as active citizens, and confront the forces that threaten democracy, we embark on a journey that is both heroic and essential. Snyder’s work reminds us that the fight for democracy is not a solitary endeavor but a shared journey that requires courage, solidarity, and unwavering commitment. In a world where the principles of democracy are increasingly challenged, embracing this hero’s journey is vital for America, along with ensuring that the lessons of the past inform a more just and equitable future.

Today, we’ve looked at the ways that we confront and interact with outward threats of tyranny.  We’ve looked at our own guardianship, vigilance, and recognition of how authoritarian tendencies may enter our public lives.  In the coming week, I ask that you think about where we are seeing the encroachments of tyranny within our American political terrain.  Think about these methods of responding and talk about them with others.  They are necessary, so look at how you may put them into practice in your own life.  Our next episode will look at how we can more personally respond to threats of tyranny within our daily lives.  

That’s it for today, but for my dear listeners with a fire in the belly, please follow this weekly podcast and to share it with others.  I welcome your comments and observations in the comments section because sometimes they offer a sparkle of ideas to include in other episodes.  Just use your manners.  I’m a real person.  Now, buckle up buttercup!  Let’s get out there, and steward democracy!