The Loss of Our Commons

Freedoms in American life, as in so many civilizations before us, do not vanish straight away. They are reduced bit-by-bit, and we often fail to notice their absence until it is too late. Each loss is obscured by a constant stream of distractions, designed or otherwise, but almost always designed. They pull attention away from any threat of loss and into the chaos as something essential slips away unnoticed behind us.

What disappears then becomes a precedent. And what becomes a precedent is soon accepted. In time, what once would have provoked disbelief among us comes to feel ordinary, even normal.

We see this not only in the erosion of civic norms, but in the conditions of daily life—political violence that shocks us to our core, yet repeats. Harm that should be unthinkable persists. Systems designed to transform that thinking into fear itself succeed and add to the chaos.

Simultaneously, powerful screen-driven technologies now shape perception itself; they influence not only what we believe, but also how that belief came to be.

We pause in disbelief at how easy it is for so many to believe so much from so little proof, often without any evidence whatsoever. Yet we seldom show even the tiniest shred of skepticism. We believe tribal messengers because what we see on a screen is designed to condition us into the tribe. The population of other tribes then become “enemies” even if, as the saying goes, “…we have seen the enemy, and they are us.”

Especially vulnerable are the common freedoms Americans have long trusted, until that is, they were found missing.

In other words, we believed in them until we couldn’t.

But the most dangerous shift may be this: the concentration of economic power into systems so driven by private gain and so technologically advanced that they now influence what we see and hear, whom we trust, and even how we come to fear or despise one another. Let that sink in…

It is a disturbing reality, to say the least.

When the power to influence beliefs and behaviors through fear and hate is real, and often without meaningful accountability to truth or public interest, then what are we to do?

I believe the first step is to recognize how we have become subject to the design itself. For these conditions are not accidental. They are rooted in behavioral science, refined through data, and deployed at scale across numerous privately held internet platforms.

These platforms are, at their core, businesses built to generate massive profit. But their designs also capture and direct human attention—and in that process, they shape what we see, what we believe, and how we respond to one another. We may call it “Internet Content,” but propaganda is most often the more apt term.

The designs provide misleading, inflammatory, and divisive “content” in words and on screens that are legally permissible. That content is then amplified to hold our attention, widely distributed, and repeated over and over again because the resources of these corporations are massive; they can spread their stories far and wide.

And through that amplification, distribution, and repeatability, division deepens by design—design that understands the sciences of human characteristics and commonalities.

These designs exist because if our masses shared a more complete and truthful understanding of what is possible for America—not just for the few, but for the many—we might begin to act differently. We might work together, as our Constitution allows and encourages, to improve the systems that shape our daily lives. It may be a worn expression, but it endures because it is true: we have more in common than what divides us.

For example, few among us would willingly accept an America in which children go hungry. The richest country in the world does not hold a people who think hungry children are an acceptable reality under any circumstances whatsoever. Yet 14 million children, 1 in 5, live in food insecure households. That’s a long-form way of saying, “Many American kids are hungry.” But zoom out and we see 47.9 million people in the U.S. lived in food-insecure households in 2024 (the latest data from the USDA Economic Research Service).

I hope you get my point: that we have so much upon which we can agree and agree easily, enthusiastically, and enough so we’d vote if we had the chance, to fix it. The fact is, we are far more aligned as Americans than we are led to believe. Hunger is only one of many alignments.

What we must now consider is whether we can create spaces where truth is not subordinated to engagement. And where ideas are not filtered through systems designed primarily for profit. And where a unified majority would demand and win far better life circumstances than what they’re experiencing now.

But truth and falsehood do not coexist comfortably. Here is a fact worth confronting directly: in America, many forms of misleading or harmful speech are not illegal.

Surely, one cannot falsely shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater when no danger exists. But broad, inflammatory statements about groups of people—even those that suggest harm—may fall within the protections of free speech unless they are likely to incite imminent violence. And even then, as we have seen, that violence, so incited, is forgiven. Similarly, false or misleading claims made on Internet platforms are often legal unless they meet specific standards such as fraud, defamation, or direct incitement. And those too, may be forgiven.

This is not a defense of such speech. It is a recognition of the environment in which we now live.

And it is within that environment that division can be advanced—not always through what is illegal, but through what is allowed.

Because too many of us have relied on systems that were not designed for truth, and we must have access to one that is.

I am therefore building a place where our common interests are united to enjoy the freedoms our founders envisioned almost 250 years ago. Freedom from hunger, unaffordable housing (homelessness), unaffordable education (lifelong debt), joblessness, and wages too low to dare dream the American dream.

I see that place and it makes me smile to see it, even if only in the dream and the vision it made me imagine—I know what that place looks like because I saw it, and now I want America to see it.

To that end, I created The American Library Of Contemporary Thought. The acronym is TALOCT™. It’s pronounced tǎl-o-c-ʼtē.

TALOCT™ is a place where honesty and truth narrow the division keeping us apart, because lies and propaganda are not allowed inside TALOCT™. One cannot enter The American Library of Contemporary Thought without agreeing that reality is truth and honesty is truth’s moral equivalent.

TALOCT™ is a place where thinkers, writers, makers, and doers of all ilk may visit, read, watch, discuss, publish, and promote the common good. It is an “all for one and one for all” place. But misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, lies, and hate are not allowed, and subscribers who practice those and other anti-American behaviors will be removed.

Because we must close the gap—it’s worse than we think…