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.
I get that everyone wishes we could get to some mythic “common ground” and that such statements are ritualistic. I also get that trying to keep up with the flood of horrible Trump appointments and statements is like trying to drink from a fire hose connected to the wrong end of a sewage treatment plant. But you can’t stop a flood of shit with silence or calls for “common ground” with the people upstream crapping into the river.
As this piece explains, with an air of astonishment and head-shaking, all too many of the powers-that-be in what passes for the Democratic political mainstream have already capitulated to the regime-in-waiting. They are, in the memorable phrase of historian Timothy Snyder, "obeying in advance." It is a disgusting show of cowardice, and sadly an unsurprising one, because by modern tradition most Democrats bring handshakes to knife fights. Meanwhile, our most prominent journalists – such as the ones working for Big Journalism orgs like the NY Times, Washington Post, NBC News, CNN et al – have pretty much joined the "let's normalize and cooperate" crowd as well. Some people I otherwise respect greatly are telling everyone to calm down, not because everything is fine – resistance is still essential, they say – but because Trump can't just flip a switch and make all the bad things happen at once. I predict they will change their tone soon enough even though I faintly hope they are right. Count me among those who aren't reassured. The swift normalization of what is guaranteed to be the most extremist right-wing American government in anyone's lifetime should be a call to action. So far, for so many, it's been a call to capitulation.
Since Harris’s defeat, even moderate commentators are waking up to the fact that Democrats need to shift their messaging in order to increase their appeal to working class voters who have turned away from the party or toward Trump. But while embracing the rhetoric of economic populism would be a good start, tweaks to language are not enough. Our definition of “ground game” must evolve as well – “knocking on doors eight or nine times”, which is how O’Brien described his party’s efforts, will not be enough to remedy the Democrats’ current disadvantage or revitalize small-d democracy.
This Guardian commentary is terrific, and every Democrat – especially activists – should read it. The fact is that the Trump and right-wing "ground game" was far, far better than the one Harris put together. It's also true that most Democrats were clueless as to why that was the case, at least until after Election Day. One of the few pieces of semi-common wisdom at this point is the absolute need for anyone who cares about democracy to work hard, at the grassroots, to organize – neighbors with neighbors, workers with co-workers – and build up and out from there. The right wing – more than amply funded billionaires and oligarchs – as been doing this for decades. The Democrats have cared almost only about national and statewide politics – their funding seems only to show up every two years, and they left the door open for what is happening now. I only hope it's not too late to remedy that failure, but the sole chance American democracy has of rescue is to try. As one grassroots organizer told the Guardian, “The work of base-building is getting people to befriend strangers and build community outside of their families, and that’s a pathway to getting people to trust their neighbors and institutions.”
Whatever the original tributaries of his ideas, they have etched a mind that is right-wing in its deepest structures. It is almost Nazi-like. Everything Kennedy says about health presumes the existence of two kinds of human beings—one pure and superior, the other impure and inferior. Two kinds of governments, too: one that protects the purity of its superior subjects with things like “vaccine choice,” the other that forces impure foreign substances into everyone’s bodies, even the superior people who don’t want them, because those substances are just agents of control. Superior people consume their own, superior agents of health, which is actually expensive, requiring special foods, special supplements, special exercises. Sorry about that, working people and the American poor.
In another must-read from the American Prospect's most insightful commentator, we are reminded of a sleazy historical norm: The right wing "clothes itself in the language of liberalism" – and countless people who should know better fall for it. America is heading into a vile era of retrograde cruelty from its rulers, in significant part because millions of people fooled themselves – or knew and didn't care – into believing that Trump's predatory "populism" was a strike against oligarchy that wants to own and control everything, not least other people's lives. RFKJr may have had a liberal idea or two earlier in his privileged existence, but he is, as the quote above makes clear, strutting in the footsteps of humanity's top villains. As the author says: Trump and his apparatchiks and cultists "know at some level that conservatism is not moral. Other times, they just do it because it works: Making their ugly aims harder to see makes it easier to get away [with] them."
The magic contest gains its challenge from a fragile truth about the human mind: how easily we can be deceived by the senses we trust the most. It’s often challenging to accurately judge our own cognition, and misjudgments can have sweeping real-world consequences. We are not only often wrong about what we think we see — like viral fake videos of election workers tearing up ballots — but also the extent to which we can trust the things we remember, like how our current emotional state recasts our memories of past civil conflicts. Many of our experiences are, in fact, an illusion.
This long read in the Lever (requires an email address to sign in) is well worth your time. You'll not only learn more about how "magic" works for its practitioners, but also how all of are susceptible to the magicians' tricks. In many if not most cases, we want to be fooled. Now mix in the poison of misinformation, plied by populist liars and their followers, and we are being trained to believe in nothing but what Dear Leader says. Needless to say, this is a recipe for the worst possible outcome. (Note: I'm a paying subscriber/donor to the Lever.)
Micah L. Sifry
Astra Taylor
Rick Perlstein
Lois Parshley
