When my brother and I were growing up, he somehow had a copy of a book that was called "The State of the World Atlas". If memory serves me correctly, my grandparents had gotten it for him, perhaps either as a birthday or Christmas present.
In any case, it had a bunch of maps of the countries of the world inside, only these were not conventional maps. They were maps that showed political realities, including wealth and food production and weaponry and rights and all sorts of other stuff that was measured. These maps were not always accurate. In fact, in many cases, they hardly looked like the actual maps of the world at all.
The book was fascinating. Not even entirely sure why it was so fascinating, but I think both my brother and I spent a lot of time looking through the pages, and trying to understand the different meanings of each map. I remember understanding it differently when I would look at it years later, when older and more capable of understanding the world a little bit.
One thing it was not was a happy book. Generally speaking, the things that you found on those pages, on those maps, were illustrations of the sorry state of the world. When you see how many weapons and conflicts there are throughout the world, how much poverty and lack of opportunity, and generally just how repressive so many nations of the world were (and are), it is not good news.
Yet, look through it we did. I was even taken by it enough one time after finding it as an adult, that I decided to get a more modernized version of it. Presumably, they made even more recent versions of it still.
In any case, here is a map that shows one glaring political reality: freedom and censorship of the press in each country. The ones that immediately draw the eye are the nations colored in black. But then you begin to notice the other nations, and what the implications of their colors are. There are indeed a few nations that are colored, appropriately, in white as pure as snow. The United States is not one of them. Neither is France.
In fact, surprisingly few nations rate very high in this map, and it is a sobering realization to come to. But, my instincts tell me that there is truth to this map. We are not as free as we sometimes want to believe that we are. To me, this became glaringly obvious in the years of George W. Bush, and particularly, in the leadup to the invasion of Iraq. The lack of ability to really question the wisdom of the invasion, or the Bush administration in general, began to be scary, and was the closest that I saw the United States come to outright fascism.
Hopefully, it will not get any closer than that. But this map is a sobering reminder that we have work to do in that regard, because we are not as free to read (or write) whatever story we like. If it was the case once in the United States, it is no longer the case anymore. Things have indeed changed. Edward Snowden gave the world a glimpse of that reality, showing the extent of spying by government, both domestic and abroad.
The link to the map can be found below. Take a look at this map. It isn't pretty, but it is important:
"Freedom of the Press Worldwide in 2013" map, ORIGINAL: By Reporters Without Borders. Found on Avaaz. Check out the full report for more details. Link from "WOW: I Bet This Map Would Be Banned In Some Countries" by Megan Kelly of Upworthy:
http://www.upworthy.com/wow-i-bet-this-map-would-be-banned-in-some-countries?c=ufb2
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