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Jul 3, 2022Liked by Barrett Holmes Pitner

Thank you so much for your weekly newsletter. They are truly grounding and keep me inspired to continue to try shaping a better world with others for future generations like my daughter and your young son. As you said, traditional U.S. culture is based on individualism. I have been processing that the idea of “Independence Day” is such a farce because it is basically a celebration of freedom without accountability, a “go it alone so I can do whatever I want” ethos and elevates individual wants over community health. On the other hand, the idea of a “National Community Day” gives me hope because it is based in the idea of joining hands with others so all can flourish. It might be highly naive to think that way yet when I look at indigenous farming practices I have learned to make my small community garden plot thrive, they are all based on the idea of interdependence of plants and the different roles they play together, not one uber plant that lords over all the others. Thanks again for all that you share.

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Perhaps if you were objective about racism and it's absurdity from a scientific perspective you could start by not calling everything racism. Even ethnocide would be more honest. "My mind is what kept me grounded within a world shaped by irrational ideas and delusions. If I crossed this metaphorical bridge I questioned whether I would find the liberation of a foreign language or become more susceptible to the ethnocidal mauvaise foi of American life." What makes you think that you haven't already crossed a similar metaphorical bridge where your "opinion is baseless and grounded in absurdities, then there should be no need to “prove” anything and it would be impossible to “prove” them (you) wrong because they (you) could just fabricate additional absurdities to “prove” their (your) baseless idea?

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