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Hello. Doing this mostly for myself. Back to trying to build the “publishing habit.”
We’re killing it at work in this regard, so that’s nice.
But me? Not so much. It’s been two months.
This is me, trying to do better.
Well, it’s great to be here at the end of Western democracy. The irony is that the call came from within the building. Even if we manage to win back some control of congress in two years and hold the line for two more and elect a non-sociopath felon more interested in dismantling the United States of America to avoid going to prison we’re still going to be years back from where we’ve been. Ben Franklin, probably, summed it up best:
It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.
This administration has done many bad deeds and they’re just getting started.
Domestically, the GOP will have finally achieved what they’ve been after for as long as I’ve been able to vote. Their thesis? Goverment doesn’t work.
How will they prove it? By looting it and burning down the shells that remain.
Beyond the cabinet of misfit toys Trump has installed, he’s set loose Elon “Ultimate Welfare Queen” Musk to gut nearly a dozen federal agencies as of this writing.
The impact of that damage is slowly dawning on the American public.
Marisa Kabas gets it right, when Social Security stumbles, it will be a wake-up call of epic proportions. (https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/government-destruction-ssa-doge)
Internationally, it’s worse. It seems unlikely even our closest allies will (or should) ever trust us again.
Nor should they if we can’t be trusted not to elect a wannabe dictator for president in any four-year cycle. A wannabe capable of throwing out decades of work in all areas of life globally.
Starting with USAID (whose website is now instructions for former staff to collect personal belongings), they’ll likely kill hundreds if not thousands of people via diseases that were under control, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and hunger.
Floods from 2019, somewhere in Nebraska.
The list goes on. Climate took an immediate hit with the U.S. leaving the Paris Agreement—again.. On top of that we’re out of the World Health Organization just in time for a mysterious illness to pop up in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. (Also on the heels of U.S. bird flu and measles outbreaks.)
Then on March 1, this administration made it clear that this administration thinks it can gaslight the world to cozy up to dictators in the name of fascism. Trump was living his best reality-TV life, while Vance appeared to be delivering his two cents to a Panera manager.
I feel bad for the world—especially our allies.
In the 1920s, fascism was rampant in the U.S. with that special Ku Klux Klan flavor. Not “rampant” in that hyperbolic way. But right out in the open—millions of members.
Dan Sinker uses this to bring us hope as this new regime in the U.S. is off and running with the story of George Dale.
George Dale hated the Ku Klux Klan.
Now hating the Klan in Muncie, Indiana was not a safe thing thing to do. The Klan ruled Muncie and Delaware County the way it ruled most places in Indiana. The entire police department and the fire department were all Klan. The county judges? Klan. The whole town, essentially, was run by the Klan.
We know this in part because George Dale printed their names in his newspaper, part of his unrelenting, unceasing, and unflinching attack on the Muncie Klan.
It nearly got him killed, when hooded men broke into his house and tried to shoot him.
The whole thing is a great, sobering, back-handedly hopeful read.
When in doubt, ask yourself, “What would George do?”
The art at 21C in Durham is great. Duck in and check it out.
