Georges Seurat

To be an active political participant is a complicated adult decision.

It requires the participant to connect the dots between a policeman in Minnesota named Derrick Chauvin and the anonymous people who spray paint otherwise graceful granite pillars marking the entry to The Presidio in San Francisco, and see that the line of dots is actually connected by a way of thinking characterized by feelings of anger, victimization, and isolation and/or, the worst feeling in the world, the desperate need for attention.

Dots don’t name names—dots are more or less anonymous—but even dots behave in such a way that sooner or later form enough of a pattern to make a whole picture. Those following the dots eventually find them making a composite ‘portrait’ that connects every citizen in every county in every state of the country to one another.

Dots can also make a beautiful tableau, as they did in the heyday of pointillism.