On Tyranny

It's short, 120 pages. An author I follow recommended it around Halloween time saying it was scary. Oh yeah. Many of the lessons in this book are eerily present today. Each lesson covers actions and duties for us to do to thwart it.

Even though it was published in 2017, it's still present for this day and age. This is a manual for any patriot to own and use. We all should read this book. I plan to reread it every couple years.

I'm late to this book - it's been a part of the discourse for a decade or so now. It's strong, punchy, and pithy: a quick guide to the mindsets we need in order to prevent totalitarianism. But its sections on media and the internet feel particularly weak - a call to support print newspapers doesn't feel like the right thing - and I think its claims about communism are not particularly nuanced. Still, we need calls to action, and this is a good one.

I'm sorry that this book is still as relevant today as it was when it was first published in 2017. The resistance continues!

I was in the middle of reading The Armageddon Protocol, the latest science fiction thriller from Dan Moren. He’s my favorite newish author, with six novels out now, each better than the last (and the first one was excellent). More people should know about his books.

Anyway, I set that aside to begin reading a 2017 book by Yale historian Timothy Snyder. It offers ““twenty lessons from the twentieth century, adapted to the circumstances of today” and is the source of many quotes and memes going around the last few days. It’s a quick easy read. If you voted for the guy and think the current panic is hyperbole, I recommend reading this book if only to reassure yourself that it is hyperbole and to see what to watch for to ensure you’re on the right side of history if the bottom ever were to fall out. And for the rest of us, this book offers practical lessons and advice drawn directly from times and places much like ours you can use to defend what you hold dear.

Unfortunately it's also very important with the current political climate.