“An ambitious freshman congresswoman demanded funding to put a public historian in every zip code in the country, a correction for what she called the contemporary crisis of truth. It was pitched as a new public works project for the intellectual class, so many of us lately busy driving cars and delivering groceries and completing tasks on demand to make ends meet. Government jobs would put all those degrees to work and be comparatively lucrative. The congresswoman envisioned a national network of fact-checkers and historians, a friendly citizen army devoted to making the truth so accessible and appealing it could not be ignored.” TruthPoliticsHistoryLiesCorrectionsHistoriansFact Checking Book:The Office of Historical Corrections Source: The Office of Historical Corrections
“It was the winter after the most depressing election of my adult life, a low point for my faith in the polls, and I had started keeping an unofficial tally in my head of how much I trusted each new white person I met. It was a pitiful tally, because I had decided most of them would forgive anyone who harmed me, would worry more about vocal antiracism ruining the holiday party season and causing the cheese plates to go to waste than about the lives and sanity of the nonwhite humans in their midst.” PoliticsRaceCompassionCaringAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsElectionsWhitesAntiracism Book:The Office of Historical Corrections Source: The Office of Historical Corrections