"Epilogue: Democrats United" (pp. 151-176).
"Acknowledgments" (pp. 179-180).
"Notes" (pp. 181-207).
"Text Credits" (p. 209).
"About the Author" (p. 211).
Unfortunately, Applebaum's short new 2024 book Autocracy, Inc. does not come equipped with an "Index."
In the "Acknowledgments," Applebaum says, among other things, "Jeffrey Goldberg and Scott Stossel commissioned and edited the original Atlantic article, 'The Bad Guys Are Winning,' which became the introduction to this book. Dante Ramos edited most of the dozen-odd other Atlantic articles that I drew upon when writing this book as well" (pp. 179-180).
In "Text Credits," Applebaum says, "Portions of this book originally appeared in the following publications." Clearly this book is a synthesis of her recent publications.
In Appelbaum's Chapter IV: "Changing the Operating System," she highlights the role of former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in formulating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (p. 98). Applebaum says, "The Soviet Union voted against the document when it was ratified in 1948, as did several Soviet satellite states. But the majority of the new UN [United Nations] members - Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans, as well as North Americans and Europeans - voted in favor" (p. 99).
Today, unfortunately, the autocrats of the world such as Putin are waging a war of ideas not only against our American-style political and economic liberalism, but also against the ideas and values in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In my judgment, because the Republican presidential candidate infamously admires Putin, it is important that Vice President Kamala Harris, the likely Democratic Party presidential candidate, should read Applebaum's new 2024 book Autocracy, Inc.
Now, bereft, as I am, of a crystal ball for foretelling the future, I often find it useful to review the work of the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian and pioneering media ecology theorist Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D., English, Harvard University, 1955). For my purposes in the present essay, I prefer to start with a brief account of Ong's work.
Ong liked to say that his work is about how and why things are the way they are. But he stopped well short of saying that his work could provide us with a crystal ball for foretelling the future. As I have already indicated, I cannot foretell the future of our American experiment in representative democracy. But I can use Ong's work to indicate the historical cultural conditions in our Western cultural history in which our American experiments in representative democracy emerged.
In Ong's "Preface" in his 1977 book Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture (pp. 9-13), he says the following in the first sentence: "The present volume carries forward work in two earlier volumes by the same author, The Presence of the Word (1967) and Rhetoric Romance, and Technology (1971)." He then discusses these two earlier volumes.
Then Ong says, "The thesis of these two earlier works is sweeping, but it is not reductionist, as reviewers and commentators, so far as I know, have all generously recognized: the works do not maintain that the evolution from primary orality through writing and print to an electronic culture, which produces secondary orality, causes or explain everything in human culture and consciousness. Rather, the thesis is relationist: major developments, and very likely even all major developments, in culture and consciousness are related, often in unexpected intimacy, to the evolution of the word from primary orality to its present state. But the relationships are varied and complex, with cause and effect often difficult to distinguish" (pp. 9-10).
Thus, Ong himself claims (1) that his thesis is "sweeping" but (2) that the shifts do not "cause or explain everything in human culture and consciousness" and (3) that the shifts are related to "major developments, and very likely even all major developments, in culture and consciousness."
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