Yeah ;( All of my connections outside the USA have some degree of stakes in here (beyond the usual influence the US has worldwide). I'm already in on the "humanity is one organism on the earth, individuals are illusions and borders are lies" thing, but the only non (us) americans I know who talk about local politics are Canadians, which is already pretty heavily intertwined with US politics. I liked to think of myself as a global thinking person, but I've been looking increasingly local, and thinking more and more exclusively about US politics (and the politics of other nuclear-armed nations).

Regarding the first article:

tldr: I read the first article and took away about as much as a non-anthropologist might take away from an anthropology academia paper. I end this section asking how you found this article / how this article ended up on your reading docket?

I do very much appreciate the articles. I've been hungry for Brainy Readings after leaving academia, but there are few forums on the internet where such things are discussed that aren't also LessWrong-likes. I have to admit that I've only read the first one through so far

I started to write something of a book report for the first article that I've had to pare down a lot. Tbh, at first I didn't think I was the target the audience for the first article. The abstract felt like an impenetrable wall (and, at least in my field, that was supposed to be the easy part), but I was pleasantly surprised to see that the rest of the article was the simple thesis, elaborated thoroughly, with a hefty contextualization in an academia I am not part of.

I had some prior background which helped contextualized the sections pertaining to language oppression in the US, Canada and China. I internalized some of those facts but otherwise it felt like too much for me to chew.

But most of what I cut out from the first and second drafts of this reply is "I can't appreciate this entirley". (I know this comment is already so comically long that I had to cut it into sections, but it was way longer!) The field is a bit too distant for me, some terms or ideas are a bit too abstract for me (is it really appropriate to label this academic article 'militant'? Is racism really inherent to any state? These are the ideas which need more elaboration for me to agree with.). It feels like liters of information flowing into my brain which only has room for a pint.

I'm curious, what got this article on your reading docket? When I was in undergrad and grad school, I usually read articles as part of an assignment, or research, or for a presentation for student organizations. Without a question to answer, or deliverable to produce, I felt my reading was directionless.

Regarding the second article, and more of a reply to you:

So I haven't read the second article through yet, and I have a separate 300 words on that already. But I really regret not reading this one first. I feel like I've internalized a lot more from this article (which I've read for only ~10 minutes so far, compared to the ~90 on the first article).

But it's been about 100 hours (I'm sorry it took so long, and I'm sorry I didn't even finish the second article yet!) But yes you did indeed make sense! I'm sorry it took me so long to reply.

Anyways, I am going to read that second paper eventually (probably in the next 50 hours)