January 2024

Some of those I met while providing navigation support at Topeka Rescue Mission’s Hope Center.

On a cold and soggy Saturday and not feeling 100 percent, I decided to spend the day cocooned in my pajamas, snugging with my KitCat on the couch.

Since the presidency of Donald Trump, our growing preoccupation with deceptive forms of political communication can be charted in the way that terms like “Big Lie,” “election denialism,” “conspiracy theory,” disinformation,” and “propaganda” have come to dominate narratives about political discourse.Such terms point to ways that authoritarian leaders, or would-be authoritarians, attempt to sow mistrust in ourselves and our institutions so that only loyalty to the leader becomes the measure of what’s real and what isn’t.