My go-to writer delivers, again. And again. One of the few certainties in life.
I turn 65 today, and as a youth I never imagined I’d last this long. If I did I probably would have made a lot of different decisions.
Had I known America’s fate I no doubt would have played my hand differently. Blessed to still be alive? Maybe . Being an empath takes a toll, and I have to question why I even care about so many people who don’t care about anyone.
I envy children, who still have the benefit of ignorance and innocence. I don’t envy the world we are leaving them.
I guess the next thing I look forward to is April’s book release. And the weekly newsletter that reminds me there are still brilliant and caring minds willing to share them
Whew. Yeah. As someone doggedly committed to the paradigms of systemic analysis and systemic solutions, it was clarifying when my wife, who is African American, reminded me that the US is uniquely impervious to systemic change. "It's always been the same battle," she said. A country capable of systemic change would have had a real Reconstruction. Or at least a real civil rights movement. What we got was 2 generations of cosmetic adjustment via "affirmative action," and the moment it looked like it might work, a violent roll-back. If the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results, I fear sanity lies in backing away from a vision of a different America. Once Harris committed to the most LETHAL army, signaling her whole entire acquiescence to genocide and war, she made it plain. Like her "placeholder president" predecessor, she is content to oversee the controlled demolition. Even if she wins, no intervention is forthcoming. This is incredibly hard to live with. You naming reality with accuracy (and poetry!) forges a community of the heart, however para-social, that I can feel connected to, at a time when any larger sense of belonging is cratering. In short (!), thank you.
I think your wife is spot on. I am constantly flabbergasted at how resistant to any progress this country is, and how our civil war battle lines have remained vibrant and active precisely because we didn't really change anything, we were just like, "Okay, don't have formal slaves *I guess*, but everything else can continue."
I'm a pretty cynical person, but what has happened to Gaza has changed me. Voting is not a panacea. We need massive organization through tenant and labor unions, because if we don't work, these ghouls stop getting paid. And if we don't work AND we don't consume, they're cooked. generalstrikeus.com
If we don't work, and stop participating with and on behalf of The Machine, something will happen. I'll be checking out the strike site... And here, a voice from a hundred years ago:
The Machine appeared in the distance, singing to itself of Money. Its song was the web they were caught in, men and women together. The villagers were as flies, to be sucked empty. God secreted a tear. "Enough, Enough!", he commanded. But The Machine looked at him, and went on singing. R.S. Thomas, Wales.
That's what Israelis tried to do, stop working, shut down the country in protest of netanyahu's takeover of the courts. And you see what he did to them, in retaliation. And there is no question in my mind that HE did that to them -- if only by lack of protective action. No one who has ever been to Israel could believe that their military could be caught unawares of an attack by land, air and sea.
The military intelligence made a small gesture of setting women in the border surveillance unit, allowing them to be overrun by armed men on Oct. 7, ‘23. The story of Hamas and its treatment of Palestinians is not pretty, either. Revenge culture breeds death.
This . . . "Once Harris committed to the most LETHAL army, signaling her whole entire acquiescence to genocide and war, she made it plain. Like her "placeholder president" predecessor, she is content to oversee the controlled demolition. Even if she wins, no intervention is forthcoming. This is incredibly hard to live with."
I try not to think about this. It's like a horsefly in a dab of ointment.
“You naming reality with accuracy (and poetry!) forges a community of the heart, however para-social, that I can feel connected to, at a time when any larger sense of belonging is cratering.” Wow! Just as poetic and accurate as Sarah. Here’s to our Community of the Heart” under Sarah ♥️🤗🥰.
***this comment was in reply to another person’s comment and I don’t know why it didn’t post there and now I can’t find it! The quote was from their comment.
“Unexplained acquiescence to a genocidal state is why I wake every day fearing America will end.”
Yes - Me too.
Emphasis on “unexplained”.
One would think our leaders would surely be able to talk to us about what we are doing as a country. But neither Democrat, nor Republican leaders seem the least bit capable of seeing the big picture or talking to us about where we are heading. Or rather, careening!
I don’t even see the window dressing anymore. And there is no platform for observations like this other than Substack and a few books.
And something is shifting right in front of us with artificial intelligence creeping into the Internet in 1000 ways dehumanizing political discussion itself.
As social media and cable news pump propaganda at us, it is becoming very challenging, not only to discern what is true but to discern what we should do about anything.
It’s even becoming difficult at times to find out which of my feelings are genuine versus what has come to me from algorithms with agendas.
Even with due diligence I find myself having strong opinions about things I didn’t even know existed two minutes ago.
This cannot be normal. And I feel it needs to be resisted with everything in my body.
So thank you for holding these problems up so they can be discussed with the urgency and care they deserve.
Living adjacent to a large swing state, I am getting lots of emails and texts asking for volunteers. For the ones I take seriously, I come to find out (after much effort) that I am rebuffed because I choose not use a smartphone for constant online access.
There is no flyering without using a smartphone to let them know, electronically, where youve covered. It's from 1984/Big Brother, constantly letting then know where you are.
I can ask them. I did canvassing a few yrs ago and it wasnt like this, but now, everything is alllll smartphone. Thanks for the suggestion, I will try.
"This cannot be normal." Truly. Highly invasive, fully immersive technology is having impacts on us that we cannot discern, however self-aware and tech savvy we may be.
Thank you, Mark! I had copied that same quote to make a comment along similar lines. I never quite understood the apologists for Biden’s blindness toward Netenyahu’s bold genocide in Gaza and encouragements of the West Bank “settlers”/invaders. I expected Harris to make a stronger stand for our better angels once she became president in her own right. Instead, she already seems to have settled upon minor improvements in Biden’s/AIPAC’s approach.
Since 2020 I have travelled 40,000+ plus miles, through 43 states and 5 Canadian provinces in a tiny self built RV. Been along Rt 66 several times. Your writing is captivating and I look forward to your new book. I have read all your other books.
Thank you! The new book is definitely up your alley -- the Route 66 chapter is so long, I divided it into two parts (because I drove the whole thing many times in different years, watching it change and the world change with it.) I've seen 48 states myself (everything but Alaska and Hawaii) and 38 made it into the book, because those are the ones my children saw with me. Anyway, thanks for reading!
I too have been in 48 states, but I never left the airport in Anchorage or Honolulu. My goal is to spend the night in all 50 states. Five more to go, AK, DE, HI, MT and ND.
I have witnessed the beginning to your story. We are nearly three generations into the ‘throw away society’. Very few seem to care about the art, craft and beauty of the past.
I sit with gifted treasures that my parents and grandparents treasured and I so loved to watch them collect and have helped to care for. Very few are interested in these things anymore in the ‘throw away society’ and worry I can find them a good home.
In the ‘throw away society’ we are throwing away our history, our morals, our ethics and possibly our country as we have known it. Because very few are interested anymore.
Thanks for your work and allowing one to cry with you.
I do think a lot more people care about these things than it seems. They’re just not the most prominent or powerful people in society, and there is no reward in caring about craft or quality or even other people. You just do it because it makes you happy or because it’s morally right. But there are a LOT of people who care about that. There is also a concerted effort to stamp out these values, particularly from Silicon Valley. The movement against reading — having people read AI summaries and write AI essays instead — is one of the worst manifestations. I’m worried about children and how this tech will be used in schools.
This article makes me want to pack up my van and hit the road before a lot of Americana disappears. Wonderful and well written article as always, Sarah.
I'm thinking about the tent and cooking gear strapped to the back of my fifty-two year old Triumph to find the folks still endeavoring to live, a neighborly way on the quiet back roads and quieting small towns...
Growing up there weren't a lot of highways so when we traveled it was the backroads. Upstate NY was a roadside antique shop heaven. I still travel the backroads to this day, but sadly a lot of that nostalgia has been replaced with strip malls and Costco's. I do take solace in the fact that I can still find oddities along the way while the corporate war lords are working 16 hours a day and sitting in meetings. Also the fact that most of them likely have no useful survival skills for when mother earth decides to flick us off this planet. "Do not go gentle into that good night".
Exactly! And the stuff you find in the junk stores -- er, antique malls -- is often handy for if the power goes out. Lots of old, simpler devices that don't rely on internet at all and sometimes not on electricity.
I've gotten to be a real antique/thrift store creature in my search for old sewing machines. Last night I finished cleaning up and oiling a Singer 66 treadle from 1906. Sews like a champ and purrs like a kitten just from "pedal power." It's so sad that these machines aren't valued for the amazing durable tools they are (built before planned obsolescence!). As things continue to collapse, good luck getting your modern hunk of plastic locked-box proprietary machine repaired and working again! These old machines were meant to be serviced and maintained by the owner. No fancy stitches, but they can sew through anything from quilting fabric to leather.
I've also been working on stocking the kitchen and workshop with old manual tools. Big farm estate sales are the place to find a lot of these things, unfortunately there aren't as many old farms up here in VT anymore.
Thank you Ms. Kendzior for another truth speaking article. Your antique hunt is a great metaphor for an America which is only a memory. It is not coming back. The demand that our citizens must support genocide is frightening.But that may not be enough, a full on war with Iraq is on the path ahead. Israel’s priorities eclipse American interests.
The answer would be a long one but a common thread is money in politics that is absolutely corrupting the system. The Russians joked about it decades ago when they said that in America everything is for sale.
My mother (Polish Communist Holocaust survivor) had a favorite joke, supposedly right from Stalin's mouth: When we hang the last two capitalists, they'll be arguing over which one sells us the rope.
But what about the idea that if you don’t cowtow to some of it, then the money will go to your opponent next time, and you will be out of office, and then not be able to do ANY good work - ?
That is well known and helps explain it all. Getting money out of politics is a good idea, but how do you go about it? Public funding for political campaigns is unrealistic at this time. But that is only part of the problem, just look at Thomas and Alito. If we can’t have faith in the highest court, what can we have faith in? This election should be an overwhelming rejection of the blatant corruption but it more likely likely will be underwhelming. How can tens of millions be voting for a failed President already convicted of multiple crimes? Say hello to the Fourth Reich? Could be.
Oh wow, that’s really interesting to hear that HST inspired They Knew ! Another brilliant column that conveys how all we with the Cassandra Syndrome feel, trying to warn everyone about what’s really going down. I wish you could be the editor in chief of the New York Times or Washington Post or whichever outlet you’d choose…
Thanks! I'd never want to work atthose places though because I wouldn't be able to write anything interesting. And yes HST was a big influence on THEY KNEW and is quoted in it several times. It was very interesting to read the collections of his columns written in real time during the Reagan and Bush admins and see his frustration around many of the same crises we have today, down to the people who caused them. Made me feel less lonely.
I find it terribly revealing that I didn't even know the book They Knew existed until I read this column today. I haven't read it yet, of course. But I'm ordering it. You landed on one of the most important features of this postmodern American age--the way that genuinely troubling history has been trivialized, twisted, and turned into just another feature of the Infotainment Industry, for fun, profit, and celebrity.
I know , I asked Greg Palast in 2007, why aren’t you employed by the NYT and well, we all know why… HST became an even bigger influence on me after he passed away when I was in the graduate journalism school at Kent State in 2005, which was when I read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72, which still reads so visionary every election year 🗳️ 💀
I have a more dour view of Hunter Thompson, who started out as a real trailblazer and seriously fell off by the 1980s. I've been re-reading his 1990s book Better Than Sex, about the Clinton years, and it hardly even qualifies as a book. In 1996, HST could never have hoped to have written a work of investigative journalism as rigorous and thorough as Roger Morris and Sally Denton's book Partners In Power. Better Than Sex undoubtedly sold better than Partners In Power--especially among left-leaners and liberals; it's my impression that Partners In Power was read and touted more heavily by partisan Republicans at the time it was published, because its takeaway was overwhelmingly anti-Clinton. But the larger story of Partners In Power was an indictment of the corrupt Washington DC that rose in the 1980s in the Reagan era, and Morris and Denton's indictment of the Clintons and the Congressional Democrats in that regard was more about their compromised collaboration with a proliferating network of unscrupulous lobbyists and manipulators who were mostly Republicans than a partisan screed insinuating that the corruption arrived with Clinton as a "liberal Democrat conspiracy." The Republicans who name-checked Partners In Power didn't actualy read the book. They just paged through it to cherry-pick quotes.
Roger Morris was no GOP shill. He once had a seat on the NSC in the Nixon era, and resigned it over the bombing of Cambodia. Sally Denton had written The Bluegrass Connection, about a ring of intelligence agency-connected drug smugglers operating out of Kentucky. But ask 90% of disaffected politically minded Americans who their inspiration is as a journalist, and to this day the list seems to begin and end with Hunter Thompson. And that's a damn shame, because a lot of less-well-known American writers have a lot more to say. Some of them even equal Thompson as a stylist--like Charles Bowden, who I never even began reading until after HST's self-arranged exit. Read Charles Bowden's book Murder City, from 2011. That's the sort of work that Hunter Thompson was once capable of, until he was swallowed by Fame found out he could get away with coasting. Charles Bowden wrote more than 60 books, sometimes as the same time as he worked as an editor at Mother Jones magazine. https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/47385.Charles_Bowden
I was once one of the kids who idolized Hunter S. Thompson. But it just has to be said: HST was a shell of his former self by the Clinton era. A Celebrity, but no longer a powerful writer. His book of collected correspondence from 1955-1967, Proud Highway--amazing! One of his best works. A signature American voice, with an eagle-eyed view of the American Zeitgeist in that era. The similarly loose assemblage from 1994, Better Than Sex, isn't 1/10 the book. HST is doing self-parody.
So, yes, read Hunter Thompson. But read Charles Bowden, too. And Kerri Arsenault and Corban Addison and Roger Morris and Sally Denton and Beth Macy and Barry Meier and Kevin Phillips and Dan Baum and Marc Reisner and T.J. English, too. Because one of the real American tragedies of this century is that all anyone needs to do to qualify as a real dialed badass political junkie is to read a handful of books by Hunter S. Thompson. And the worst of it is that the HST cult really is an elite small percentage of Americans, compared to the majority--particularly the youth, the rising generations of Eloi, who no longer read any books at all, much less works of nonfiction reportage.
You should put together a required reading syllabus with exact pieces from the different authors you mentioned. I would like the see this and I’m sure others would too.
I am glad you record our illness and dying in books which will attest to what is really happening because we can hide books away, just as the ancient scribes did. The uber hackers will make all of our hopes, ideas, and sense of community impermanent in the ether. I guess we all understand that. Now we must put the truths in books into time capsules and bury them in the woods.
I’m honestly worried it’s come to that! I’m very curious, in a full of dread kind of way, whether two of my books (Hiding in Plain Sight and They Knew) will be pulled from circulation in the next year. I’ve watched it happen to other bestselling authors at the demand of the Trump camp or Israel.
I'll be sure to put my copy of "HiPS" into my time capsule behind the garage along with Bradbury, Asimov, Thomas Mann ("Listen, Germany"), Solzhenitsyn, Stefan Zweig, Guillen ("2030"), and others. I am old and have pre-written letters to my kids and grandkids advising them of the existence of my locker of important ideas and memories, my apologia, so they can empty it before they sell the house. They need to know that many have resisted as warnings emerged, but the lure of bread and circuses distracts too many.
Me too! It’s finalized, there are advanced copies, so if it suddenly gets canned, we’ll know why. Preorders give me some leverage, so please keep them coming folks!
Sarah, I’m a sucker for an old store’s relics too! The one where I grew up in Georgia has been gone for several years now. It was the center of the community & sold items of all kinds! In my youth I spent lots of time hanging out with there observing the customers as they came and went! Not open on Sunday either. If you needed something, you’d better get it by about 5:00 pm on Saturday!
I'm a sucker for any kind of yard sale, flea market, junk store, antique mall. As a kid, I was always scouring the neighborhood and assembled what I called my "strange object collection" which was the bane of my parents' existence -- it got rather large...but I don't regret it!
I have zero regrets except I wish I’d spent more time there. At the back of the store was an old pot bellied stove where farmers, pulpwooders, and others sat around on rainy or cold days when they didn’t work. I should have received college credit for what I learned from them! 😁
Some of my best memories were living in a small cottage in the woods, with a wood stove for heat, and a compost toilet. There was electricity, a gas stove, and running water for the shower and kitchen sink. And it was all I needed. (I admit that I refused to clean the compost toilet, and the maintenance guy had to do it.)
I used to use Twitter as a tool to comment on certain elected Democrat’s posts and ask them why they refused to do anything about their colleagues who planned the insurrection (like Swalwell and Schumer to name a few) and all I got were others reporting me. I lost my profile 6 times before Musk. I understand fully where you are coming from when you say you were a teller and no one believed you. But since this profile is obviously an anon and all of my profiles on Twitter were the same since I am internationally famous, seriously I am, 😎, no one gives a toss about what I say but with someone like you, people do understand, that’s why you have not been taken down on X.
I truly do not understand why Americans do not demand more from the people they elect. I do not understand why very few do the simple research of seeing what they pass in Congress and what they don’t pass and most importantly do not see the money flowing to them for doing so and how that actually affects them.
One thing gives me a sliver of hope after seeing an interview by Kamala Harris yesterday when she stopped the reporter dead in her tracks and said “I have my own policies and they are not Biden’s.” Everyone should think about this and why she is finally saying it. She knows Biden has helped usher in the mafia take over and we are at critical juncture now because of it. She is not perfect, but she is our only hope to stop from going over a cliff.
"I truly do not understand why Americans do not demand more from the people they elect." --> this is the most profound change I've seen in the past four years, though it was growing beforehand. During the second Bush term, people *constantly* made demands of their failed legislature. During the Obama era, after a brief honeymoon, a series of mass protest movements arose and lasted a decade. People were VERY discontent during the Trump years, and that led to the largest protests in US history (including at the height of the Civil Rights movement), long lists of demands, and a general expectation that public servants need to start doing their job.
This all changed in late 2020/2021 for two main reasons: 1) a double-sided propaganda campaign insisting that there was a secret plan to fix everything that was weaponized against both GOP and Dem voters, whether in the form of QAnon or Mueller/Garland; I wrote about this in THEY KNEW 2) abject fear as the American people realized through the response to covid mass death that our officials do not care at all about keeping us safe, keeping the country intact, or even about winning elections (as opposed to stealing them). The American public lost leverage incredibly fast.
It would be great if Harris ends up being different, but I'm not too hopeful as she started her campaign with so much good faith momentum and managed to squander it by cozying up to the Cheney family, and you only do that if you've got a bad agenda or if you're under someone else's control.
When I read that David Axelrod would be advising her, my heart sank. It's not 2008. Killing enthusiasm among youth and progressives to win back GOP moderates is incredibly risky. The immorality of supporting genocide aside, even tactically it feels misguided.
P.S. I forgot to mention that I have been living on Route 66 in Stroud, Oklahoma since July of 2021 and in June of 2023 opened the Route 66 Spirit of America Museum. It is a small storefront museum that celebrates the history of innovative thinking that has helped America "boldly go where it's never gone before" and can still help America take a giant leap forward if enough people learn of the new ways of thinking (example: Buckminster Fuller) that make that giant leap possible. I'm guessing you haven't been to Stroud (home of the Rock Cafe) in a while, but I invite you to visit when you take your next road trip.
That's so kind of you to say! Here's the museum's website (which will soon have a new main image to suggest the grassroots "Moonshot project" we can create tied to Route 66 turning 100 in 2026 (same year America turns 250). Will also have a blog soon.
While I have hope (possibly misguided) for a Harris presidency, my real hope is that we ordinary Americans build something better ourselves. As Buckminster Fuller once said, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
My go-to writer delivers, again. And again. One of the few certainties in life.
I turn 65 today, and as a youth I never imagined I’d last this long. If I did I probably would have made a lot of different decisions.
Had I known America’s fate I no doubt would have played my hand differently. Blessed to still be alive? Maybe . Being an empath takes a toll, and I have to question why I even care about so many people who don’t care about anyone.
I envy children, who still have the benefit of ignorance and innocence. I don’t envy the world we are leaving them.
I guess the next thing I look forward to is April’s book release. And the weekly newsletter that reminds me there are still brilliant and caring minds willing to share them
Whew. Yeah. As someone doggedly committed to the paradigms of systemic analysis and systemic solutions, it was clarifying when my wife, who is African American, reminded me that the US is uniquely impervious to systemic change. "It's always been the same battle," she said. A country capable of systemic change would have had a real Reconstruction. Or at least a real civil rights movement. What we got was 2 generations of cosmetic adjustment via "affirmative action," and the moment it looked like it might work, a violent roll-back. If the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results, I fear sanity lies in backing away from a vision of a different America. Once Harris committed to the most LETHAL army, signaling her whole entire acquiescence to genocide and war, she made it plain. Like her "placeholder president" predecessor, she is content to oversee the controlled demolition. Even if she wins, no intervention is forthcoming. This is incredibly hard to live with. You naming reality with accuracy (and poetry!) forges a community of the heart, however para-social, that I can feel connected to, at a time when any larger sense of belonging is cratering. In short (!), thank you.
I think your wife is spot on. I am constantly flabbergasted at how resistant to any progress this country is, and how our civil war battle lines have remained vibrant and active precisely because we didn't really change anything, we were just like, "Okay, don't have formal slaves *I guess*, but everything else can continue."
I'm a pretty cynical person, but what has happened to Gaza has changed me. Voting is not a panacea. We need massive organization through tenant and labor unions, because if we don't work, these ghouls stop getting paid. And if we don't work AND we don't consume, they're cooked. generalstrikeus.com
If we don't work, and stop participating with and on behalf of The Machine, something will happen. I'll be checking out the strike site... And here, a voice from a hundred years ago:
The Machine appeared in the distance, singing to itself of Money. Its song was the web they were caught in, men and women together. The villagers were as flies, to be sucked empty. God secreted a tear. "Enough, Enough!", he commanded. But The Machine looked at him, and went on singing. R.S. Thomas, Wales.
That's what Israelis tried to do, stop working, shut down the country in protest of netanyahu's takeover of the courts. And you see what he did to them, in retaliation. And there is no question in my mind that HE did that to them -- if only by lack of protective action. No one who has ever been to Israel could believe that their military could be caught unawares of an attack by land, air and sea.
The military intelligence made a small gesture of setting women in the border surveillance unit, allowing them to be overrun by armed men on Oct. 7, ‘23. The story of Hamas and its treatment of Palestinians is not pretty, either. Revenge culture breeds death.
This . . . "Once Harris committed to the most LETHAL army, signaling her whole entire acquiescence to genocide and war, she made it plain. Like her "placeholder president" predecessor, she is content to oversee the controlled demolition. Even if she wins, no intervention is forthcoming. This is incredibly hard to live with."
I try not to think about this. It's like a horsefly in a dab of ointment.
“You naming reality with accuracy (and poetry!) forges a community of the heart, however para-social, that I can feel connected to, at a time when any larger sense of belonging is cratering.” Wow! Just as poetic and accurate as Sarah. Here’s to our Community of the Heart” under Sarah ♥️🤗🥰.
***this comment was in reply to another person’s comment and I don’t know why it didn’t post there and now I can’t find it! The quote was from their comment.
“Unexplained acquiescence to a genocidal state is why I wake every day fearing America will end.”
Yes - Me too.
Emphasis on “unexplained”.
One would think our leaders would surely be able to talk to us about what we are doing as a country. But neither Democrat, nor Republican leaders seem the least bit capable of seeing the big picture or talking to us about where we are heading. Or rather, careening!
I don’t even see the window dressing anymore. And there is no platform for observations like this other than Substack and a few books.
And something is shifting right in front of us with artificial intelligence creeping into the Internet in 1000 ways dehumanizing political discussion itself.
As social media and cable news pump propaganda at us, it is becoming very challenging, not only to discern what is true but to discern what we should do about anything.
It’s even becoming difficult at times to find out which of my feelings are genuine versus what has come to me from algorithms with agendas.
Even with due diligence I find myself having strong opinions about things I didn’t even know existed two minutes ago.
This cannot be normal. And I feel it needs to be resisted with everything in my body.
So thank you for holding these problems up so they can be discussed with the urgency and care they deserve.
Living adjacent to a large swing state, I am getting lots of emails and texts asking for volunteers. For the ones I take seriously, I come to find out (after much effort) that I am rebuffed because I choose not use a smartphone for constant online access.
Grab the flyers and just do your conversations.
There is no flyering without using a smartphone to let them know, electronically, where youve covered. It's from 1984/Big Brother, constantly letting then know where you are.
Can you go to a local Democrat party office and pick up enough for your neighborhood?
I can ask them. I did canvassing a few yrs ago and it wasnt like this, but now, everything is alllll smartphone. Thanks for the suggestion, I will try.
"This cannot be normal." Truly. Highly invasive, fully immersive technology is having impacts on us that we cannot discern, however self-aware and tech savvy we may be.
Thank you, Mark! I had copied that same quote to make a comment along similar lines. I never quite understood the apologists for Biden’s blindness toward Netenyahu’s bold genocide in Gaza and encouragements of the West Bank “settlers”/invaders. I expected Harris to make a stronger stand for our better angels once she became president in her own right. Instead, she already seems to have settled upon minor improvements in Biden’s/AIPAC’s approach.
Since 2020 I have travelled 40,000+ plus miles, through 43 states and 5 Canadian provinces in a tiny self built RV. Been along Rt 66 several times. Your writing is captivating and I look forward to your new book. I have read all your other books.
Thank you! The new book is definitely up your alley -- the Route 66 chapter is so long, I divided it into two parts (because I drove the whole thing many times in different years, watching it change and the world change with it.) I've seen 48 states myself (everything but Alaska and Hawaii) and 38 made it into the book, because those are the ones my children saw with me. Anyway, thanks for reading!
I too have been in 48 states, but I never left the airport in Anchorage or Honolulu. My goal is to spend the night in all 50 states. Five more to go, AK, DE, HI, MT and ND.
I have witnessed the beginning to your story. We are nearly three generations into the ‘throw away society’. Very few seem to care about the art, craft and beauty of the past.
I sit with gifted treasures that my parents and grandparents treasured and I so loved to watch them collect and have helped to care for. Very few are interested in these things anymore in the ‘throw away society’ and worry I can find them a good home.
In the ‘throw away society’ we are throwing away our history, our morals, our ethics and possibly our country as we have known it. Because very few are interested anymore.
Thanks for your work and allowing one to cry with you.
I do think a lot more people care about these things than it seems. They’re just not the most prominent or powerful people in society, and there is no reward in caring about craft or quality or even other people. You just do it because it makes you happy or because it’s morally right. But there are a LOT of people who care about that. There is also a concerted effort to stamp out these values, particularly from Silicon Valley. The movement against reading — having people read AI summaries and write AI essays instead — is one of the worst manifestations. I’m worried about children and how this tech will be used in schools.
We are throwing away each other as well -- friendships, relationships, easily considered disposable.
This article makes me want to pack up my van and hit the road before a lot of Americana disappears. Wonderful and well written article as always, Sarah.
Thank you!
I'm thinking about the tent and cooking gear strapped to the back of my fifty-two year old Triumph to find the folks still endeavoring to live, a neighborly way on the quiet back roads and quieting small towns...
Growing up there weren't a lot of highways so when we traveled it was the backroads. Upstate NY was a roadside antique shop heaven. I still travel the backroads to this day, but sadly a lot of that nostalgia has been replaced with strip malls and Costco's. I do take solace in the fact that I can still find oddities along the way while the corporate war lords are working 16 hours a day and sitting in meetings. Also the fact that most of them likely have no useful survival skills for when mother earth decides to flick us off this planet. "Do not go gentle into that good night".
Exactly! And the stuff you find in the junk stores -- er, antique malls -- is often handy for if the power goes out. Lots of old, simpler devices that don't rely on internet at all and sometimes not on electricity.
I've gotten to be a real antique/thrift store creature in my search for old sewing machines. Last night I finished cleaning up and oiling a Singer 66 treadle from 1906. Sews like a champ and purrs like a kitten just from "pedal power." It's so sad that these machines aren't valued for the amazing durable tools they are (built before planned obsolescence!). As things continue to collapse, good luck getting your modern hunk of plastic locked-box proprietary machine repaired and working again! These old machines were meant to be serviced and maintained by the owner. No fancy stitches, but they can sew through anything from quilting fabric to leather.
I've also been working on stocking the kitchen and workshop with old manual tools. Big farm estate sales are the place to find a lot of these things, unfortunately there aren't as many old farms up here in VT anymore.
What kind of devices would those be, for example? I hate internet-dependent devices! I can't even get a legit landline where I live, they dont exist.
This is such an apt metaphor to describe what's happening now
Her writing is white hot, unforgiving. I couldn’t admire her more…
Thank you!
Truth!
Thank you Ms. Kendzior for another truth speaking article. Your antique hunt is a great metaphor for an America which is only a memory. It is not coming back. The demand that our citizens must support genocide is frightening.But that may not be enough, a full on war with Iraq is on the path ahead. Israel’s priorities eclipse American interests.
I know Sarah wrote about this, but I'm still not quite understanding why American leaders are so deeply invested in Israel's attacks on others...
The answer would be a long one but a common thread is money in politics that is absolutely corrupting the system. The Russians joked about it decades ago when they said that in America everything is for sale.
My mother (Polish Communist Holocaust survivor) had a favorite joke, supposedly right from Stalin's mouth: When we hang the last two capitalists, they'll be arguing over which one sells us the rope.
But what about the idea that if you don’t cowtow to some of it, then the money will go to your opponent next time, and you will be out of office, and then not be able to do ANY good work - ?
That is well known and helps explain it all. Getting money out of politics is a good idea, but how do you go about it? Public funding for political campaigns is unrealistic at this time. But that is only part of the problem, just look at Thomas and Alito. If we can’t have faith in the highest court, what can we have faith in? This election should be an overwhelming rejection of the blatant corruption but it more likely likely will be underwhelming. How can tens of millions be voting for a failed President already convicted of multiple crimes? Say hello to the Fourth Reich? Could be.
$$$
So it's not that Israel is our only ally in the Middle East and we have to keep them? This is what I hear from people.
I just dont get the $ connection -- Israel is paying us for military support?
AIPAC spends vast sums on acquiescent candidates. That's who pays.
Israel is our friend? That is questionable.
Oh wow, that’s really interesting to hear that HST inspired They Knew ! Another brilliant column that conveys how all we with the Cassandra Syndrome feel, trying to warn everyone about what’s really going down. I wish you could be the editor in chief of the New York Times or Washington Post or whichever outlet you’d choose…
Thanks! I'd never want to work atthose places though because I wouldn't be able to write anything interesting. And yes HST was a big influence on THEY KNEW and is quoted in it several times. It was very interesting to read the collections of his columns written in real time during the Reagan and Bush admins and see his frustration around many of the same crises we have today, down to the people who caused them. Made me feel less lonely.
I find it terribly revealing that I didn't even know the book They Knew existed until I read this column today. I haven't read it yet, of course. But I'm ordering it. You landed on one of the most important features of this postmodern American age--the way that genuinely troubling history has been trivialized, twisted, and turned into just another feature of the Infotainment Industry, for fun, profit, and celebrity.
I know , I asked Greg Palast in 2007, why aren’t you employed by the NYT and well, we all know why… HST became an even bigger influence on me after he passed away when I was in the graduate journalism school at Kent State in 2005, which was when I read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72, which still reads so visionary every election year 🗳️ 💀
I have a more dour view of Hunter Thompson, who started out as a real trailblazer and seriously fell off by the 1980s. I've been re-reading his 1990s book Better Than Sex, about the Clinton years, and it hardly even qualifies as a book. In 1996, HST could never have hoped to have written a work of investigative journalism as rigorous and thorough as Roger Morris and Sally Denton's book Partners In Power. Better Than Sex undoubtedly sold better than Partners In Power--especially among left-leaners and liberals; it's my impression that Partners In Power was read and touted more heavily by partisan Republicans at the time it was published, because its takeaway was overwhelmingly anti-Clinton. But the larger story of Partners In Power was an indictment of the corrupt Washington DC that rose in the 1980s in the Reagan era, and Morris and Denton's indictment of the Clintons and the Congressional Democrats in that regard was more about their compromised collaboration with a proliferating network of unscrupulous lobbyists and manipulators who were mostly Republicans than a partisan screed insinuating that the corruption arrived with Clinton as a "liberal Democrat conspiracy." The Republicans who name-checked Partners In Power didn't actualy read the book. They just paged through it to cherry-pick quotes.
Roger Morris was no GOP shill. He once had a seat on the NSC in the Nixon era, and resigned it over the bombing of Cambodia. Sally Denton had written The Bluegrass Connection, about a ring of intelligence agency-connected drug smugglers operating out of Kentucky. But ask 90% of disaffected politically minded Americans who their inspiration is as a journalist, and to this day the list seems to begin and end with Hunter Thompson. And that's a damn shame, because a lot of less-well-known American writers have a lot more to say. Some of them even equal Thompson as a stylist--like Charles Bowden, who I never even began reading until after HST's self-arranged exit. Read Charles Bowden's book Murder City, from 2011. That's the sort of work that Hunter Thompson was once capable of, until he was swallowed by Fame found out he could get away with coasting. Charles Bowden wrote more than 60 books, sometimes as the same time as he worked as an editor at Mother Jones magazine. https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/47385.Charles_Bowden
I was once one of the kids who idolized Hunter S. Thompson. But it just has to be said: HST was a shell of his former self by the Clinton era. A Celebrity, but no longer a powerful writer. His book of collected correspondence from 1955-1967, Proud Highway--amazing! One of his best works. A signature American voice, with an eagle-eyed view of the American Zeitgeist in that era. The similarly loose assemblage from 1994, Better Than Sex, isn't 1/10 the book. HST is doing self-parody.
So, yes, read Hunter Thompson. But read Charles Bowden, too. And Kerri Arsenault and Corban Addison and Roger Morris and Sally Denton and Beth Macy and Barry Meier and Kevin Phillips and Dan Baum and Marc Reisner and T.J. English, too. Because one of the real American tragedies of this century is that all anyone needs to do to qualify as a real dialed badass political junkie is to read a handful of books by Hunter S. Thompson. And the worst of it is that the HST cult really is an elite small percentage of Americans, compared to the majority--particularly the youth, the rising generations of Eloi, who no longer read any books at all, much less works of nonfiction reportage.
You should put together a required reading syllabus with exact pieces from the different authors you mentioned. I would like the see this and I’m sure others would too.
I have several booklists on my Substack page, including many of the authors I've listed. Here's one of them https://adwjeditor.substack.com/p/nonfiction-books-that-are-meant-to
Thanks!
Your essays always bring tears to my eyes. I then sit with them, staring out into the distance, grateful for your words. Keep keeping it real.
Thank you for reading <3
I am glad you record our illness and dying in books which will attest to what is really happening because we can hide books away, just as the ancient scribes did. The uber hackers will make all of our hopes, ideas, and sense of community impermanent in the ether. I guess we all understand that. Now we must put the truths in books into time capsules and bury them in the woods.
I’m honestly worried it’s come to that! I’m very curious, in a full of dread kind of way, whether two of my books (Hiding in Plain Sight and They Knew) will be pulled from circulation in the next year. I’ve watched it happen to other bestselling authors at the demand of the Trump camp or Israel.
I'll be sure to put my copy of "HiPS" into my time capsule behind the garage along with Bradbury, Asimov, Thomas Mann ("Listen, Germany"), Solzhenitsyn, Stefan Zweig, Guillen ("2030"), and others. I am old and have pre-written letters to my kids and grandkids advising them of the existence of my locker of important ideas and memories, my apologia, so they can empty it before they sell the house. They need to know that many have resisted as warnings emerged, but the lure of bread and circuses distracts too many.
I hope your next book will be published.
Me too! It’s finalized, there are advanced copies, so if it suddenly gets canned, we’ll know why. Preorders give me some leverage, so please keep them coming folks!
How to preorder a hard copy?
I am tempted to buy physical books now instead of the digital ones.
It’s a good idea. I worry the digital versions of my books will be altered without my consent or possibly even my knowledge.
I bought all the physical books. JFC!
Excellent article. Sadly, you have been a crystal ball, that your predictions have come true more than I would like them to be.
Thanks! I look forward to the days when I’m wrong.
Unfortunately, she hasn't been wrong yet.
Sarah, I’m a sucker for an old store’s relics too! The one where I grew up in Georgia has been gone for several years now. It was the center of the community & sold items of all kinds! In my youth I spent lots of time hanging out with there observing the customers as they came and went! Not open on Sunday either. If you needed something, you’d better get it by about 5:00 pm on Saturday!
I'm a sucker for any kind of yard sale, flea market, junk store, antique mall. As a kid, I was always scouring the neighborhood and assembled what I called my "strange object collection" which was the bane of my parents' existence -- it got rather large...but I don't regret it!
I have zero regrets except I wish I’d spent more time there. At the back of the store was an old pot bellied stove where farmers, pulpwooders, and others sat around on rainy or cold days when they didn’t work. I should have received college credit for what I learned from them! 😁
Some of my best memories were living in a small cottage in the woods, with a wood stove for heat, and a compost toilet. There was electricity, a gas stove, and running water for the shower and kitchen sink. And it was all I needed. (I admit that I refused to clean the compost toilet, and the maintenance guy had to do it.)
I used to use Twitter as a tool to comment on certain elected Democrat’s posts and ask them why they refused to do anything about their colleagues who planned the insurrection (like Swalwell and Schumer to name a few) and all I got were others reporting me. I lost my profile 6 times before Musk. I understand fully where you are coming from when you say you were a teller and no one believed you. But since this profile is obviously an anon and all of my profiles on Twitter were the same since I am internationally famous, seriously I am, 😎, no one gives a toss about what I say but with someone like you, people do understand, that’s why you have not been taken down on X.
I truly do not understand why Americans do not demand more from the people they elect. I do not understand why very few do the simple research of seeing what they pass in Congress and what they don’t pass and most importantly do not see the money flowing to them for doing so and how that actually affects them.
One thing gives me a sliver of hope after seeing an interview by Kamala Harris yesterday when she stopped the reporter dead in her tracks and said “I have my own policies and they are not Biden’s.” Everyone should think about this and why she is finally saying it. She knows Biden has helped usher in the mafia take over and we are at critical juncture now because of it. She is not perfect, but she is our only hope to stop from going over a cliff.
"I truly do not understand why Americans do not demand more from the people they elect." --> this is the most profound change I've seen in the past four years, though it was growing beforehand. During the second Bush term, people *constantly* made demands of their failed legislature. During the Obama era, after a brief honeymoon, a series of mass protest movements arose and lasted a decade. People were VERY discontent during the Trump years, and that led to the largest protests in US history (including at the height of the Civil Rights movement), long lists of demands, and a general expectation that public servants need to start doing their job.
This all changed in late 2020/2021 for two main reasons: 1) a double-sided propaganda campaign insisting that there was a secret plan to fix everything that was weaponized against both GOP and Dem voters, whether in the form of QAnon or Mueller/Garland; I wrote about this in THEY KNEW 2) abject fear as the American people realized through the response to covid mass death that our officials do not care at all about keeping us safe, keeping the country intact, or even about winning elections (as opposed to stealing them). The American public lost leverage incredibly fast.
It would be great if Harris ends up being different, but I'm not too hopeful as she started her campaign with so much good faith momentum and managed to squander it by cozying up to the Cheney family, and you only do that if you've got a bad agenda or if you're under someone else's control.
When I read that David Axelrod would be advising her, my heart sank. It's not 2008. Killing enthusiasm among youth and progressives to win back GOP moderates is incredibly risky. The immorality of supporting genocide aside, even tactically it feels misguided.
P.S. I forgot to mention that I have been living on Route 66 in Stroud, Oklahoma since July of 2021 and in June of 2023 opened the Route 66 Spirit of America Museum. It is a small storefront museum that celebrates the history of innovative thinking that has helped America "boldly go where it's never gone before" and can still help America take a giant leap forward if enough people learn of the new ways of thinking (example: Buckminster Fuller) that make that giant leap possible. I'm guessing you haven't been to Stroud (home of the Rock Cafe) in a while, but I invite you to visit when you take your next road trip.
I haven't but now I want to go!
That's so kind of you to say! Here's the museum's website (which will soon have a new main image to suggest the grassroots "Moonshot project" we can create tied to Route 66 turning 100 in 2026 (same year America turns 250). Will also have a blog soon.
While I have hope (possibly misguided) for a Harris presidency, my real hope is that we ordinary Americans build something better ourselves. As Buckminster Fuller once said, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
www.route66spiritofamericamuseum.org