A note on why this exists, and what it isn’t.
The Paper Trail was created by one person, from a small town in the middle of nowhere USA. I used to shovel shit, pound fence posts, brush hog trails, sling mud for masons, strip roofs for a roofer, dig footers for tombstones. I’m just a regular person who went through the first chapters of life following directives and getting it done. That’s how I was raised — listen and do.
It wasn’t until I had a teacher challenge me with one question:
“Is that what you think, or is that what your parents think?”
Everything changed after that. Nobody had ever challenged me like that before, and honestly, I didn’t learn to think for myself until I was 19 or 20 years old. What that looked like for me was actually challenging my own ideas — spending time fact-checking myself. What I found was that the things I had clung to were tilted at a specific angle, and much of it was more journalistic framing than actual facts. I was being given a direction to follow, and I followed it. Unfortunately, many of us follow that same path. Some for longer than others.
There is a time and a place to take direction and execute. When it comes to how to make mud, clean up a job site, prep the next project, track inventory — whatever the task — there is a time and place for direction and action.
Civics is about sharing factual data that is undisputed, and giving you the freedom of thought to determine for yourself: What does this information tell me? What does it mean to me? Will it hurt me, or help me? Will it hurt my children, or help future generations? Will it raise my grocery bill or lower it? Will it make life harder, or easier?
The Paper Trail doesn’t think for you. It thinks about how to get you all the verifiable, factual information possible so you can do with it what you will. I’m just a normal person, from a normal background, trying to make sure everyone — from every walk of life — has the same access to the facts that the well-connected have always had.
You don’t need me to tell you what to think.
You just need the facts, in one place, in plain English.
That’s what this is.
— The Founder