1. Hearing from so many Facebook and other friends over the past couple of days during the uncertain hours waiting to see if I'd be receiving a donor's kidney heartened me. Many of the likes and hearts and cares I received on Facebook came from former LCC students. All of the comments and emojis lifted my sprits. Hearing from these past students both lifted my spirits and brought back joyful memories of the work we did together, the conversations we enjoyed, and how much I enjoyed teaching at LCC.
2. One of the many positive things that happened in the Wednesday meetings with the transplant professionals was having all three of them praise me for how I'm taking care of myself as a kidney patient. Their encouragement strengthened my resolve to continue to go to the Fitness Center regularly and exercise and to continue in my efforts to lose weight.
So, this afternoon, I hightailed it out to Smelterville. I huffed. I puffed. I didn't blow any houses down. But I did listen to a Fresh Air interview with an expert on propaganda, especially on Allied propaganda to counter Nazi Germany's propaganda campaigns. The expert, Peter Pomerantsev, has also studied Vladimir Putin's propaganda campaigns and he was insightful about how authoritarians employ propaganda, not so much to change citizens' minds, but to give them reason to believe their deepest and darkest prejudices and fears are legitimate.
I wasn't done working out when this interview ended and I switched over to the podcast Throughline and listened to their episode on the history of the Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and militant group, Hezbollah. I've dipped into this history before, but it had been several years. It all came back to me -- the Lebanese Civil War, Israel's invasions of Lebanon, the attack on the U. S. Marines in Beirut, the Iran/Iraq war, and more. I hadn't explored this history, however, since the Arab Spring in the early 2010s and today I learned more about the consequences to its reputation when Hezbollah lent support to Bashar al-Assad during the Syrian civil war. The episode ended with questions about Hezbollah's role in the current war between Israel and Gaza.
3. Back home, I fixed Sesame Soy Pork Bowls (from HelloFresh) for Debbie and me.
After dinner, we listened to two podcasts.
First, we listened to the final two episodes of Landslide, a dive into the the 1976 and 1980 presidential elections and rise of power of New Right Convervatives, led by Ronald Regan, in the Republican Party. The season concluded with Regan's landslide victory over Carter in the 1980 election, thanks largely to how evangelicals (like the Moral Majority) and secular conservatives formed powerful coalitions that swamped Carter. This coalition was greatly aided by the hostage situation in Tehran, the recession of the late 1970s along with inflation, gasoline shortages, and by the Carter administration's efforts to end the tax exempt status of private schools that were segregationist, that were created, in part, as a part of the backlash to civil rights legislation and legal rulings that made segregation illegal.
Then we went back to favorite podcast, Slow Burn, realizing that we haven't listened to several seasons of their work.
We decided to listen to the first episode of the season focused on the Los Angeles riots of 1992.
The season began with an episode entitled, "The Tape". We listened to what led up to Rodney King and his two friends being pulled over by the police and how things escalated to the point that four of the officers beat Rodney King. We also heard from the man who lived in an apartment overlooking the intersection where the beating took place and how he happened to have a video camera and decided to record what happened.
Before long, that video tape was played on news outlets across the USA and around the world and coverage of one of the major events of the early 1990s kicked into high gear and beyond into overdrive.
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