This is a compendium of the reporting and commentary that best explains the America's political, economic, and social conditions – and, most important, how we can find a way back from the dark days ahead. You will rarely find anything here from the New York Times or Washington Post or any of the other Big Journalism companies that failed us so completely during the 2024 elections and are now sucking up – even more than usual – to Donald Trump, his cult, and corporate oligarchs. My focus will be on smaller, more honorable outlets (and individuals). I hope you'll support them with your attention and your money.
American greatness is founded on the rule of law. That is a fundamental reason why foreigners trust American assets and the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. If Trump uses the justice system to go after his enemies — and to reward his billionaire cronies — then investors could rightly take fright. Rather than making America great again, Trump’s assault on US institutions will make America more like Russia and China. Putin and Xi Jinping will benefit. Americans and America’s allies will suffer the consequences.
The Financial Times chief foreign affairs columnist is echoing countless others with this commentary. (Here's a non-paywalled link.) He's seen national suicide before, as a longtime Economist journalist before joining the FT: the U.K.'s insane Brexit, which has pretty much destroyed that nation's economy, aided by years of right-wing government that willfully made things worse. Watching Trump's early moves elicits the same sense of morbid fascination, with the certainty that his mission is destruction. There are some mumblings in the business community that maybe Trump doesn't mean it or won't be all that bad, but keep in mind that America's corporate oligarchs have gladly sold out democracy and empowered the dictators who are our enemies, to save a few bucks on taxes. They haven't looked much further ahead than that, and may someday regret their greed.
Carr’s extremely likely to rubber stamp terrible media and telecom mergers, ensuring that your prices skyrocket and service quality suffers. He’ll also take a hatchet to whatever’s left of media consolidation limits, which Trumplicans only pretend to care about when they’re spreading bigoted conspiracy theories. The result of both will be higher prices, more harmful consolidation, and lower quality services. Carr’s primary pet project on the telecom front will be to try to impose AT&T’s long-percolating plan to tax tech companies (read: you) in order to throw billions in new telecom subsidies at AT&T and Comcast. Subsidies, if his track record holds, he’ll fail utterly to ensure are spent intelligently. This will be framed as good faith reform by both Carr and gullible press outlets, starting sometime next Spring.
Another day, another terrible Trump apparatchik. There are so many reasons to be appalled by Carr's imminent appointment to head the FCC, and this TechDirt post cites some of them. Carr is a radical right-winger whose job will be to help Trump punish enemies and reward friends in all kinds of corrupt ways. It's no wonder that Comcast's boss prostrated himself before the Trump altar praising this nomination; Carr will give Comcast and the other members of the Internet access cartel free rein to cut cozier deals, hike prices, destroy users' privacy, and in general bring our communications – including personal communications – under the "embrace" of giant corporations even more than they are now. The absurdity of Carr's claim that he's for free speech – echoed by news media stenographers – is Onion-like, in a sick way, when you realize that he's completely simpatico with Elon Musk.
It’s often said that Trump campaigned expressly on a platform of authoritarian rule, but this also applies to corruption: He didn’t disguise his promises to govern in the direct interests of some of the wealthiest executives and investors in the country—and he won anyway. Trump and his allies will likely interpret this as a green light to engage in an extraordinary spree of unrestrained malfeasance. There are several reasons to fear this could amount to a level of oligarchic corruption that outdoes anything Trump did in his first term. In short, conditions are ripe for right-wing elites to try to loot the place from top to bottom.
Now they notice. It would have been helpful for journalists to make observations (like this New Republic piece) loudly and persistently during the campaign (and earlier). But the press, with few exceptions, has consistently normalized Trump world's relentless corruption since he first became a public figure as a New York City real-estate developer and celebrity. Even when he became president, journalists never even attempted to explain to the public just how deep and wide that corruption went (and still goes). Trump is the grifter-in-chief, but it seems like everyone in his orbit gets a piece – family, business associates, foreign governments, cabinet secretaries, you name it. They aren't all slimeballs looking to sell (or buy) access to power and money, but I doubt that most Americans have a clue that Trump's first presidency was – by far – the most corrupt in the nation's history. This one is guaranteed to be vastly worse. If I ran a news organization of any size, I would have pulled together as many examples of Trump world corruption as I could find, and present the entire canvas of sleaze in a way that anyone could understand. Not one journalism organization has tried, and I can't understand why.
Fact 1) Malicious people lie about their intentions, and pretend to be confused and ignorant and complacent to disguise the malice of their intention until it is too late to prevent them. Fact 2) People who support malice not out of a deliberate desire for malice, but out of confusion and ignorance and complacency are also unsafe people. ... In this coming age of fascism, it's going to be just as important to discover safe people as it is to discover unsafe people.
I don't fully endorse the advice in this long newsletter post. But he gives us a lot to chew on, and if we truly are on the eve of genuine fascism in America he may be understating the case. It's clear enough to me, no matter what happens, that I need to rethink some relationships. I was called paranoid due to my response to Trump's 2016 win, but stayed on good terms with several people whom I knew had supported him (in one case assuming he'd lose). That ship sailed earlier this month. I'll be glad if I can help show still-rational Trump supporters why they made a mistake that at least some will regreat. But I'll be focusing my energy, and friendships, on building and supporting alliances among people who love democracy and human rights.
Karl Bode
Greg Sargent
A.R. Moxon
