“2016 was not a rupture, but an acceleration” Whereas his major contribution was to accelerate the polarization and permanently destabilize any shared sense of decency and accountability. Get them pitted against each other, meanwhile selling us all down the river for their ill-gotten gains. I never would have imagined back in Nov 2020 after the country starved off an aspiring autocrat that the acceleration would be put into overdrive. What a betrayal of simply epic proportions. The acts of a soulless devil I can understand as pure evil. The acts of good people caving to the devil is much worse.
To quote the great Sarah Kendzior, ;) “democrats will let you die, republicans will kill you.” I would love a bit more time not getting killed, to build some defenses.
I agree that the only way a mere mortal can survive this criminal, conspiratorial, corrupt world is float and dream of another reality. Because we see the world similarly, Sarah, it is a guilty pleasure for me to read your prose. You DO remind me of my deceased mentor, William Gass. But Bill was cynical on an individual and familial level. Even when the crazies were in power, he confined his metaphor to the characters in a novel or his own alter-ego at home digging in the basement. Bill did not have the courage to challenge authority directly in the way that you do. He focused on internal darkness, while you see the possibility of social illumination extinguished by the Devil. In the end none of that may matter as we head for a much less accommodating world than the one that we have right now. Bert Gold, Falmouth, Massachusetts, March 22, 2024
Another visceral piece that puts my feelings into words much more eloquently than I ever could. I'm a former state legislator and current child policy advocate and I've been in deep burn out for the past year, finally recognizing the extent of what you've described thanks to a betrayal that pulled back the curtain. So much so that I opened a community sewing maker space to ground me in community and be a respite from the treachery. But in my small rural town you better believe Trump t-shirts and toxic nationalist garb make their way in (yes, even in Vermont) and disrupt my naive attempts to protect my peace, along with the patronizing think pieces discrediting our rational critiques of Biden. It's soul crushing, and I'm working hard to find some radical hope...
Thank you Sarah. Beautiful writing. PS every time you link to one of your many prescient and essential "documentary" prior articles on the interwebs, I make sure to save the link to the Internet Archive... :( FWIW also, I'm one of the citizen activists behind the Media and Democracy Project, working to call out the mainstream media for their failures and to help folks demand better media. Would love a follow on Xitter if you're still there: https://twitter.com/FixMediaNow (we're also here on Substack: https://mediaanddemocracyproject.substack.com/ and on the tubes https://mediaanddemocracyproject.org where we are also taking the fight to Fox at the FCC)
1. Long before I knew you existed I read Alfred W. McCoy's "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade" (rev. 2003) (My guess is that you've already read it). McCoy is Harrington Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. When he was working on his PhD at Yale in the early '70s, he took a trip to SE Asia to interview drug lords. The CIA tried to stop the book's publication, and he very nearly got kicked out of Yale which, by the way, has since granted him a Distinguished Alumnus Award. Scholars refer to this book as "the Bible" on the international drug trade. "Over decades," you write, "intelligence agencies, organized crime, and corporate corruption merged, solidifying their anti-American agenda in the 21st century." Yes, it's not new; it goes back even decades before I was born. McCoy writes that in those days, it wasn't bankers from businesses like Goldman Sachs who became secretaries of the treasury, but people who worked for the CIA. Your writings have greatly expanded my knowledge of this and other subjects.
2. I love your stories about Missouri, especially the ones about its oftentimes weird and fascinating history. You always manage to weave those stories into the subjects of your books in ways that are both delightful and terrifying.
Excellent piece, Sarah! So many of the same thoughts & feelings running through me as well. And the deepening bite of our being disempowered from the kinds of public pressure & popular movement which have historically allowed us to magnify that urgency. Thank you for your ability to articulate it so clearly.
This line nailed it for me: "Powerbrokers want Americans to respond to policies with the instinctual loyalty of a sports fan, instead of the discerning conscience of a citizen."
I've been screaming for years that our media is doing basically sports coverage (ever notice that?) but then I read this and it makes sense because yes: we're supposed to join a "team" every election and cheer on that team instead of treating elections what they're supposed to be: job interviews. We're supposed to be evaluating people *who will be in charge of a huge part of our lives* based on their character, actions and even more so: their *record*. They're supposed to be working for *us*--public servants, as you've said many times.
Not people we mindlessly get behind and root for because they're our "team". We're supposed to be ONE team. Our media coverage promotes this infantile take on politics, where substance doesn't matter--just who's up in this week's rankings, who's down, who wore it better, who had better "optics" and who can best monopolize news cycles with a media that has a depraved indifference to truth, facts or holding power to account. Which begs the question: WTF was the point of a free press if they voluntarily neutered themselves?
In a country where one of the two choices is a coup-attempting, rapist, Russian puppet, serial lying swindler who stole state secrets, hid them and lied about it, you'd think the media would be SCREAMING to the point where he withdrew but no... we get ESPN-style roundtables with tired, vacuous DC lifers and Steve Kornacki with his Big Board showing us the latest playoff pic... er, I mean polling results? WTF?
The great irony will be when the MAGA voters--should he get back in--realize that oh: you didn't hear? He's not just going to screw those "libs" you hate into the ground--it's gonna be you, too. Second irony: the media outlets that have covered for him for years now, like the NYT? They've literally signed their own death warrant. Everyone goes down, including you, so your "team" could win.
Just what I needed this morning. After dealing with some serious health issues last year and coming out the other end relatively unscathed, I have also decided to take the sweetness when it comes and not go looking for negativity. 🌞
About paywalls: it doesn’t take a paywall to keep most Americans in the dark about what’s going on in politics. (Lots of people do not want to know, or are too busy surviving.) There are plenty of free Subtacks, etc, that allow us to choose who to support. I’ve made connections who retweet gift articles all the time.
The monetization worth concern is the one corrupting the “free” mainstream content. Mainstream media for people who read books is like watching the movie Scream: The call is coming from inside the house.
(I’d much rather financially support Sarah, Aaron Rupar, Heather Cox Richardson, David Pepper, etc. not only for their expertise, but because they can link me to free content (with an option to support), books to read and other people to follow.)
It’s the same money behind many legislators. In TN I look out my own window at the idyllic natural features of my property (White’s Creek Pike possesses its own hairpin curve named Devil’s Elbow just three miles from my house) and grapple with a state legislature - a 15min drive away - actively attempting to overturn my marriage, deny me SS benefits and working to remove me and all LGBT people from society.
The conflict of seeing such beauty with your eyes one minute and reading about my own proposed destruction with those same eyes the next is something hard to put into words, but the great thing about communities like the one Sarah is curating here is that we can read about our shared experiences, connect and maintain hope.
"I am engaging in float trip semiotics because I cling to float trip memories like a raft in a bloodbath. Maybe that’s not what you’re here for. But I wasn’t here for the plague or the genocide or the vast political betrayal, and I got them anyway."
I'm here for it, Sarah - we're with you. None of us wanted all the horrors we're contending with, but here we friggin' are. I cling to joy as tight as I can these days as well. I urge my children and everyone I love to find their joy and hold on tight - it's gonna get bumpy as hell (as if it isn't already hellish...)
Also? "I would rather be a devil in alliance with truth, than an angel in alliance with falsehood." - Ludwig Feuerbach
Thank you again for your beautiful words, and consistent moral clarity. Goodness knows we need more of this in our world. Cheers.
There is no one writing to this moment in history better than you do. Both the unblinking honesty and the beauty of how you express it. Thank you.
“2016 was not a rupture, but an acceleration” Whereas his major contribution was to accelerate the polarization and permanently destabilize any shared sense of decency and accountability. Get them pitted against each other, meanwhile selling us all down the river for their ill-gotten gains. I never would have imagined back in Nov 2020 after the country starved off an aspiring autocrat that the acceleration would be put into overdrive. What a betrayal of simply epic proportions. The acts of a soulless devil I can understand as pure evil. The acts of good people caving to the devil is much worse.
"A paywalled warning of peril is like a phone sex hotline dressed up as a 911 call."
Ayup - that's our corporate/billionaire media in action.
To quote the great Sarah Kendzior, ;) “democrats will let you die, republicans will kill you.” I would love a bit more time not getting killed, to build some defenses.
I love nature because it never attempts to deceive me. It always tells the truth.
Thanks for another great article.
I agree that the only way a mere mortal can survive this criminal, conspiratorial, corrupt world is float and dream of another reality. Because we see the world similarly, Sarah, it is a guilty pleasure for me to read your prose. You DO remind me of my deceased mentor, William Gass. But Bill was cynical on an individual and familial level. Even when the crazies were in power, he confined his metaphor to the characters in a novel or his own alter-ego at home digging in the basement. Bill did not have the courage to challenge authority directly in the way that you do. He focused on internal darkness, while you see the possibility of social illumination extinguished by the Devil. In the end none of that may matter as we head for a much less accommodating world than the one that we have right now. Bert Gold, Falmouth, Massachusetts, March 22, 2024
Another visceral piece that puts my feelings into words much more eloquently than I ever could. I'm a former state legislator and current child policy advocate and I've been in deep burn out for the past year, finally recognizing the extent of what you've described thanks to a betrayal that pulled back the curtain. So much so that I opened a community sewing maker space to ground me in community and be a respite from the treachery. But in my small rural town you better believe Trump t-shirts and toxic nationalist garb make their way in (yes, even in Vermont) and disrupt my naive attempts to protect my peace, along with the patronizing think pieces discrediting our rational critiques of Biden. It's soul crushing, and I'm working hard to find some radical hope...
Thank you Sarah. Beautiful writing. PS every time you link to one of your many prescient and essential "documentary" prior articles on the interwebs, I make sure to save the link to the Internet Archive... :( FWIW also, I'm one of the citizen activists behind the Media and Democracy Project, working to call out the mainstream media for their failures and to help folks demand better media. Would love a follow on Xitter if you're still there: https://twitter.com/FixMediaNow (we're also here on Substack: https://mediaanddemocracyproject.substack.com/ and on the tubes https://mediaanddemocracyproject.org where we are also taking the fight to Fox at the FCC)
1. Long before I knew you existed I read Alfred W. McCoy's "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade" (rev. 2003) (My guess is that you've already read it). McCoy is Harrington Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. When he was working on his PhD at Yale in the early '70s, he took a trip to SE Asia to interview drug lords. The CIA tried to stop the book's publication, and he very nearly got kicked out of Yale which, by the way, has since granted him a Distinguished Alumnus Award. Scholars refer to this book as "the Bible" on the international drug trade. "Over decades," you write, "intelligence agencies, organized crime, and corporate corruption merged, solidifying their anti-American agenda in the 21st century." Yes, it's not new; it goes back even decades before I was born. McCoy writes that in those days, it wasn't bankers from businesses like Goldman Sachs who became secretaries of the treasury, but people who worked for the CIA. Your writings have greatly expanded my knowledge of this and other subjects.
2. I love your stories about Missouri, especially the ones about its oftentimes weird and fascinating history. You always manage to weave those stories into the subjects of your books in ways that are both delightful and terrifying.
Excellent piece, Sarah! So many of the same thoughts & feelings running through me as well. And the deepening bite of our being disempowered from the kinds of public pressure & popular movement which have historically allowed us to magnify that urgency. Thank you for your ability to articulate it so clearly.
This line nailed it for me: "Powerbrokers want Americans to respond to policies with the instinctual loyalty of a sports fan, instead of the discerning conscience of a citizen."
I've been screaming for years that our media is doing basically sports coverage (ever notice that?) but then I read this and it makes sense because yes: we're supposed to join a "team" every election and cheer on that team instead of treating elections what they're supposed to be: job interviews. We're supposed to be evaluating people *who will be in charge of a huge part of our lives* based on their character, actions and even more so: their *record*. They're supposed to be working for *us*--public servants, as you've said many times.
Not people we mindlessly get behind and root for because they're our "team". We're supposed to be ONE team. Our media coverage promotes this infantile take on politics, where substance doesn't matter--just who's up in this week's rankings, who's down, who wore it better, who had better "optics" and who can best monopolize news cycles with a media that has a depraved indifference to truth, facts or holding power to account. Which begs the question: WTF was the point of a free press if they voluntarily neutered themselves?
In a country where one of the two choices is a coup-attempting, rapist, Russian puppet, serial lying swindler who stole state secrets, hid them and lied about it, you'd think the media would be SCREAMING to the point where he withdrew but no... we get ESPN-style roundtables with tired, vacuous DC lifers and Steve Kornacki with his Big Board showing us the latest playoff pic... er, I mean polling results? WTF?
The great irony will be when the MAGA voters--should he get back in--realize that oh: you didn't hear? He's not just going to screw those "libs" you hate into the ground--it's gonna be you, too. Second irony: the media outlets that have covered for him for years now, like the NYT? They've literally signed their own death warrant. Everyone goes down, including you, so your "team" could win.
Just what I needed this morning. After dealing with some serious health issues last year and coming out the other end relatively unscathed, I have also decided to take the sweetness when it comes and not go looking for negativity. 🌞
The Four Stages of Sarah Kendzior:
Sarah is just a hysterical liberal.
Sarah might have a point.
Sarah was exactly Right.
SARAH, HELP US!
Thank you for illuminating these dark days. 💖Love your nature photos
Great work! Great reading!!
About paywalls: it doesn’t take a paywall to keep most Americans in the dark about what’s going on in politics. (Lots of people do not want to know, or are too busy surviving.) There are plenty of free Subtacks, etc, that allow us to choose who to support. I’ve made connections who retweet gift articles all the time.
The monetization worth concern is the one corrupting the “free” mainstream content. Mainstream media for people who read books is like watching the movie Scream: The call is coming from inside the house.
(I’d much rather financially support Sarah, Aaron Rupar, Heather Cox Richardson, David Pepper, etc. not only for their expertise, but because they can link me to free content (with an option to support), books to read and other people to follow.)
It’s the same money behind many legislators. In TN I look out my own window at the idyllic natural features of my property (White’s Creek Pike possesses its own hairpin curve named Devil’s Elbow just three miles from my house) and grapple with a state legislature - a 15min drive away - actively attempting to overturn my marriage, deny me SS benefits and working to remove me and all LGBT people from society.
The conflict of seeing such beauty with your eyes one minute and reading about my own proposed destruction with those same eyes the next is something hard to put into words, but the great thing about communities like the one Sarah is curating here is that we can read about our shared experiences, connect and maintain hope.
"I am engaging in float trip semiotics because I cling to float trip memories like a raft in a bloodbath. Maybe that’s not what you’re here for. But I wasn’t here for the plague or the genocide or the vast political betrayal, and I got them anyway."
I'm here for it, Sarah - we're with you. None of us wanted all the horrors we're contending with, but here we friggin' are. I cling to joy as tight as I can these days as well. I urge my children and everyone I love to find their joy and hold on tight - it's gonna get bumpy as hell (as if it isn't already hellish...)
Also? "I would rather be a devil in alliance with truth, than an angel in alliance with falsehood." - Ludwig Feuerbach
Thank you again for your beautiful words, and consistent moral clarity. Goodness knows we need more of this in our world. Cheers.