This kind of writing is one of the reasons I really love Medium. Smart, in your face, well researched and educational. Look, I also happen to agree with you wholeheartedly, but that’s not what makes this a good piece. You’re clearly very very bright and I love the far-reaching nature of this article. I also very much value the way you wove disparate pieces together in a cohesive whole, which appeals very much to the way all these things are inextricably entwined. For they are. Too many folks love to tease out a single topic and make that The One Big Thing when it’s far more complex and shaded than that. Unfortunately, that asks that all of us think far more critically and with a much greater willingness to look at the whole, which doesn’t fit the sound byte mentality. That mentality makes us all malleable, reacting only to the issue of this very second, rather than the ability to pull back and look not only at what this presenting issue means in and of itself, but as part of a far more complex and shifting Whole.

I loved this. Just loved it. It was hard to read, but that’s not your problem. It’s our job, and mine as a journalist, to present what is as best we can. Facts don’t lie. I am exhausted by so many folks presenting opinion as fact, and folks swallowing it whole because to question takes commitment.

Thank you so very much. I learned a lot, and that is a gift of immense value.