To the feckless, cowardly punditocracy, greater “influencer” community, and corporate media:
You did this. With very few exceptions, you allowed a group of oligarchs, theocrats and foreign dictators to take over America, leaving hundreds of millions of real human beings vulnerable to a fascist, genocidal dictatorship whose underlying ideology is great replacement theory.
You spent weeks covering Fani Willis’s sex life. You spent months attacking Joe Biden’s mental capacity to lead while you ignored the frothing, demented lunatic literally telling us — through “The Weave” — what he’s going to do. Remember when he told us he was going to do Kristallnacht? Just Trump being Trump, right?
No. It was not. The people around him, infested with literal Russian agents, like Susie Wiles, who it was announced will be Trump’s chief of staff, Peter Thiel’s android JD Vance, who is very likely to become the President, not to mention people like Erik Prince & Mike Flynn, who is openly threatening Barack Obama and hundreds more people on his “Deep State Target List,” will absolutely do everything Trump said. On Day ONE.
The only story is the Fall of America — and what do to about our impending autocracy. Every moment you spend on Democratic finger-pointing is not just fiddling on the Titanic, it’s hypnotizing people into not getting on a life boat. You must be honest about the potential horrors of a man like Donald Trump having the nuclear codes and the legal right, per the theocratic crime cult on SCOTUS, to hunt down anyone he wants and execute them.
You must cover the fact that there are numerous individuals in the crosshairs of violence, arrest, imprisonment and death. You must cover the fact that every vulnerable group will be at the complete mercy of a fascist dictatorship.
Instead of musing about “what went wrong” in the Democratic messaging, imagine for a fucking moment how women, LGBTQ+, brown, Black, Jewish, Native and numerous other vulnerable people are going to die — systematically, intentionally, by a regime of misogynist white supremacists who see women as subservient and anyone not in the ruling class as subhuman.
Here are just a few alternate ideas for what to talk about instead of a fantasy comeback of the Democrats in the “next election” — that will never happen.
How to survive autocracy
Strategies for resistance
Protecting the vulnerable
Personal security against government surveillance and violence
How State governments need to step up to protect people
How this actually happened, psychological warfare, active measures
How the US is being turned into the Western States of Russia
How to protect yourself from indoctrination and brainwashing into the cult that has taken over the government
Historical parallels, what are the potential ways out of this
I know everyone is scared. You have editors, managers, studio heads, whatever. There are so many excuses to chew up the Last Days of America with empty garbage. But I’m begging you to step up, just once.
The Fourth Estate has fallen along with the rest of our formerly protected rights. This is your last chance to show what a “free press” was for.
Thanks so much for reading and your support. Please consider sharing my work with others. It means a lot!
If you haven’t upgraded to a paid subscription, please consider it. This is currently my only means of support while I do my best to help navigate the complexities of this undeclared, existential war. I also have a Zoom call every week for paid subscribers. 🙏
If you’d like to help me out, here is my DonorBox. 💙
My podcast is @radicalizedpod & YouTube. We have a livestream Thursdays at 7PM PST. Thanks again! 🙏🇺🇸
There may be an interesting phenomenon at play here. Wei are beginning to see a resistance already forming of Blue state governors. This is not something I had contemplated in any way before. The other thing to consider is that elections are controlled in the states and all the swing state governors are democrats with the exception of Georgia and even Kemp is no fan of Trump. The other possibility I see in this equation is for the localization of media in this environment. As Trump continues to become more and more untenable to the people and the national media is seen for what it is, there is an opportunity to relocalize media. If you remember Local media pretty much collapsed after the financial crisis in 2008. There is much novelty and unpredictability that can occur in this environment and bears watching. I believe there is a resistance brewing.
Thank-you, Jim. Glad you are writing more on Substack.