The arc of history bends toward justice, but not on its own. It requires agitation and protest, but also the patient and careful, often excruciating, work of dismantling language—whether it’s news, blatant propaganda, or anything else—to figure out what it’s doing, how it’s acting on us. And in most cases, leaving it dismantled, so others can see it for what it is, even if, much of the time, it leaves you looking cynical, unpatriotic, subversive. But subversion is, after all, the duty of the patriot under the threat of tyranny. It’s our most effective tool.