I try to read an equal amount of theory and history as I do news. Context is everything. When you read about these bastards doing evil deeds, read too about Mussolini hanging from a bridge. I enjoy learning about coups perpetrated by the CIA last century (there’s 70 of them) and all the horrendous fallout it caused so that I can taunt nationalists with facts about the nature of the empire that they’re only just now recognizing.

News is only a part of the process. Theory, praxis, cadre, in equal parts.

There’s a novella by Ursula K Leguin called The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas wherein there is a utopian society that is able to exist because of the misery of one child who endures all of the hardship and sadness of the society. NK is that child for the world. They are kept like a specimen in a cabinet of curiosities warning everyone against communism, making the “free” in the West thankful for what modicum of freedom they’ve managed to preserve.